Introduction To Semiconductor Physics (Unit-1) : Electronic Devices (KEC-301)
Introduction To Semiconductor Physics (Unit-1) : Electronic Devices (KEC-301)
Introduction To Semiconductor Physics (Unit-1) : Electronic Devices (KEC-301)
Electronic Devices
(KEC-301)
Presented By:
Devesh Singh
Assoc. Professor, ECE Department
Ajay Kumar Garg Engineering College
Ghaziabad (U.P.)
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Electronic Materials
• The goal of electronic materials is to generate and control
the flow of an electrical current.
• Electronic materials include:
1. Conductors: huge number of e-, low resistance, Large current
flow
2. Insulators: No carrier, have high resistance, almost zero current
flow
3. Semiconductors: limited carriers, limited current, fine control
over current
Conductors
• Good conductors have low resistance so electrons flow
through them with ease.
• Best element conductors include:
– Copper, silver, gold, aluminum, & nickel
• Alloys are also good conductors:
– Brass & steel
• Good conductors can also be liquid:
– Salt water
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Metallic Bonding: each Na surrounded by 7 Na atoms. All try to fill outer shell but
remains incapable. Thus ample of electrons available
Insulators
• Insulators have a high resistance so current does not flow in them.
• Good insulators include: Glass, ceramic, plastics, & wood
• Most insulators are compounds of several elements.
• Ionic Bonding: example NaCl, strong bonding, No free carrier.
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Semiconductors
• Semiconductors are materials that can be provide large variation in
current starting from zero ( as insulators)
• Common elements such as silicon, and germanium are Semiconductors.
• Silicon (IV group) element is one of widely used semiconductor.
• More about semiconductor in next lecture.
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Si Atom
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Intrinsic----Pure SC
Type of SC
extrinsic ----Doped SC
• For dominace of one type of carrier, doping is required
• “Impurities” are different elements.
• This process is called doping.
• Pure SC is called Intrinsic while doped is called extrinsic.
• Both categories behaves like insulator at ZERO K.
N-type SC
• Pentavalent impurity like are P
{[Ne]3s23p3}, As {[Ar]4s23d104p3},
has 5 valence electrons.
• Adding arsenic (doping) will allow
four of the arsenic valence electrons
to bond with the neighboring silicon
atoms.
• The one electron left over for each
arsenic atom becomes available to
conduct current flow.
• Each pentavalent impurity is called
donor impurity as it donates an e- to
SC crystal
• It is called N-type doping
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Semiconductor Materials
Two general classifications:
Elemental semiconductor materials, found in group IV of the periodic table,
crytal composed of single species of atoms
compound semiconductor- more than one atom type, made up of group (III- V) & (II-VI) elements.
Application
Silicon is now used for the majority of rectifiers, transistors, and integrated circuits.
Compound SC:
widely used in high-speed devices because of its higher electron mobility
Devices requiring the emission or absorption of light.
The two-element (binary) III-V compounds such as GaN, GaP, and GaAs are common in
light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
Three-element (ternary) compounds such as GaAsP and four-element (quaternary)
compounds such as InGaAsP can be grown to provide added flexibility in choosing materials
properties.
Fluorescent materials such as those used in television screens are usually II-VI compound
semiconductors such as ZnS.
Light detectors are commonly made with InSb, CdSe, or other compounds such as PbTe
and HgCdTe. Si and Ge are also widely used as infrared and nuclear radiation detectors.
An important microwave device, the Gunn diode, is usually made of GaAs or InP.
Semiconductor lasers are made using GaAs, AlGaAs, and other ternary and quaternary
compounds.
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TYPES OF SOLIDS
Crystalline, Amorphous and polycrystalline, and are the three general types of solids.
Crystalline solid: atoms making up the crystal are arranged in a periodic fashion. That is, there is some basic
arrangement of atoms that is repeated throughout the entire solid.
Polycrystalline solids :composed of more than one single-crystal material called grains and are separated by
grain boundaries.
SPACE LATTICES
The periodic arrangement of atoms in the crystal is called the lattice.
Our primary concern will be the single crystal with its regular
geometric periodicity in the atomic arrangement.
Primitive and Unit Cell
A unit cell is a small volume of the crystal that can be used to reproduce the entire
crystal.
Primitive Unit cell is smallest group of atoms which has the overall symmetry of a
A generalized
crystal and from which the entire lattice and from which the entire lattice can be built up primitive unit
by repetition in three dimensions cell.
The difference between primitive cell and unit cell is that, primitive cell allows atoms
only at corners of a cell, where, unit cell allows lattice
points at corners, face centres and body centre
Generalized displacement vector is given by
r p a qb s c
p, q and s are integers. a,b, c vectors need not
orthogonal.
A two-dimensional lattice showing translation of a unit cell by r = 3a + 2b.
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Simple cubic: Here a, b, Body Center Cubic, BCC- Face Center Cubic, FCC- Diamod cell-
and c are the basis consist of eight atoms at consist of eight corner (14 FCC +4 Displaced) atoms
vectors along the edges corners and one atom at atoms and six face atoms =18 atoms
of the standard SC cell. It the center of cube
consist of eight atoms at A Diamond lattice starts with a
all eight corners FCC and then adds four
additional INTERAL atoms at
locations a/4 + b/4 + c/4, away
from each of the atoms.
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In FCC corner atoms and face atom (at position a/2+b/2+c/2) are nearest neighbor.
2 2 2
a a c 2 2 a c 1 2a
2 2 4 2
2
The radius of the spheres = a
4
atoms/cell:
Each corner contributes 1/8 of its volume => corner atom contribution=8X1/8= volume of 1 atom
Each face contributes ½ of its volume => face atom contribution=6X1/2= volume of 3 atom
Effective atoms contributing to volume= 8 X 1/8 (corner) + 6 X ½ (face)= 1 + 3=4
4 2 3 2 3
4 a 4 2 a3
3 4 3
PACKING fraction=effective atom volume/unit cell volume
3 43
2
a3 a3 3 4
2
0.7404... 74%
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Problem
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Equivalence of dirction:
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Note: reciprocal is taken to avoid notation of infinty, if a plane is parallel (i.e., intercept at infinity) to one of the axis. On
other hand if plane passes through origin, origin itsef is changed.
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Miller Indices
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The surface density of atoms may be important, for example, in determining how another
material, such as an insulator, will “fit” on the surface of a semiconductor material.
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Replace by ‘+4’
Displaced atoms
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A special problem arises when students first encounter the theory of quantum mechanics.
The problem is that quantum concepts are largely mathematical in nature and do not
involve the “common sense” quality associated with classical mechanics. At first, many
students find quantum concepts difficult, not so much because of the mathematics
involved, but because they feel the concepts are somehow divorced from “reality.” This is
a reasonable reaction, since ideas which we consider to be real or intuitively satisfying are
usually based on our own observation. Thus the classical laws of motion are easy to
understand because we observe bodies in motion every day.
On the other hand, we observe the effects of atoms and electrons only indirectly, and
naturally we have very little feeling for what is happening on the atomic scale.
It is necessary, therefore, to depend on the facility of the theory to predict experimental
results rather than to attempt to force classical analogs onto the non-classical phenomena
of atoms and electrons.
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Planck ( in1900) postulated light wave emission contains discrete packets of energy called
quanta having energy E = hv, where v is the frequency of radiation
h is a constant now known as Planck's constant ( h= 6.625 x 10-34 J-s)
Einstein (in 1905) interpreted photoelectric result by suggesting that energy in a light wave is
also contained in discrete packets called a photons, whose energy is also given by E = hv.
A photon with sufficient energy, then, can knock an electron from the surface of the material.
The minimum energy required to remove an electron is called the workfunction of the
material and any excess photon energy goes into the kinetic energy of the photoelectron.
The maximum kinetic energy of the photoelectron can be written as
where hv is the incident photon energy and φ =hvo is the minimum energy, or work function,
required to remove an electron from the surface.
This experiment demonstrates clearly that Planck’s hypothesis was correct— light energy is contained in discrete
units rather than in a continuous distribution of energies.
we find in quantum physics that a higher intensity light corresponds to a larger number of these photons, and
hence a larger number of photoelectrons. While as per classical mechanics higher amplitude or intensity wave
packs more energy, and should have increased the photoelectron energy.
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where λ is the wavelength of the light wave. Then, de Broglie hypothesized that the, wavelength
of a particle can be expressed as
Where, p is the momentum of the particle and A is known as the de Broglie wavelength of the
matter wave.
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One consequence of the uncertainty principle is that we cannot determine the exact position of
an electron. Instead, determine the probability of finding an electron at a particular position.
*This is often called the principle of indeterminacy. This is a better term, since the parameters cannot be determined with better
accuracy than specified in these equations.
Thus one of the important results of quantum mechanics is that a probability density function
(PDF) can be obtained for a particle in a certain environment, and this function can be used
to find the expectation value of important quantities such as position, momentum, and
energy.
Given a probability density function P(x) for a one- dimensional problem, the probability of
finding the particle in a range from x to x+dx is P(x)dx. Since the particle will be
somewhere, this definition implies that
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Time component
Spatial component
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Once we find the Ψ wave-function for a particle, we can calculate its average position, energy,
and momentum, within the limits of the uncertainty principle.
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or
wave function solution is a traveling wave, which means that a particle moving in free space
is represented by a traveling wave. The first term, with the coefficient A , is a wave traveling
in the x direction, while the second term, with the coefficient B , is a wave traveling in the x
direction. The value of these coefficients will be determined from boundary conditions.
A free particle with a well-defined energy will also have a well-defined λ and P.
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where
boundary condition is that the wave
function Ψ(x) must be continuous
potential function is infinite in some regions
It yields
Finally, the time-independent wave solution is
solution represents the electron (bound) in the infinite potential have standing wave
solution. while free electron was represented by a traveling wave, and now the bound
particle is represented by a standing wave.
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This implies energy of the particle is quantized (Discrete). The discrete energies lead to
quantum states. The integer n is called a quantum number; the particular wave-function Ψn
and corresponding energy state En describe the quantum state of the particle.
Thus, wave function of
particle is now given by
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Travelling wave
K1 is given as
general solution is
Where
BC requires that Ψ2(x) must remain finite, thus B2 =0. The Ψ2 is given as
(2)
(4)
Eq 1-3 provides condition
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Since the potential function is everywhere finite (in infinite case Ψ=0), the first derivative of the
wave function must also be continuous so that
(5)
(6)
Using 1,2,5; we have
Using 4,6; we have
(7)
incident flux
where Vi and Vr are the incident and reflected velocities, respectively, of the particles. In region-
I, V =0 so that E =T , where T is the kinetic energy of the particle. The kinetic energy is given by
using
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Using (7)
The result of R =1 implies that all of the particles incident on the potential barrier for E V
0 are eventually reflected. Particles are not absorbed or transmitted through the
potential barrier. This result is entirely consistent with classical physics!
Additional information due to quantum mechanics Mechanics:
Since A2≠0 => A2A2*=PDF ≠0
This result implies that there is a finite probability that the incident particle will penetrate
the potential barrier and exist in region II. The probability of a particle penetrating the
potential barrier is another difference between classical and quantum mechanics: The
quantum mechanical penetration is classically not allowed. Although there is a finite
probability that the particle may penetrate the barrier, since the reflection coefficient in
region I is unity, the injected particle in region II must eventually turn around and move
back into region I.
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solutions of the wave equation in regions I, II, and III are given
Where
Equation implies that there is a finite probability that a particle impinging a potential barrier
will penetrate the barrier and will appear in region III. This phenomenon is called tunneling
and it, too, contradicts classical mechanics.
Penetration of particle to region III is called Tunneling. Note as width of potential barrier
decreases tunneling probability increases.
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Spherical coordinate
(1)
To be seen later
Using (1)
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second term in Equation is a function of φ only, whereas all the other terms are
functions of either r or φ . We may then write that
Similarly, two separate the variable constants ‘l’ and ‘n’ can be used to segregate ‘θ’ and ‘r’ The
separation-of-variables constants n, l, and m are known as quantum numbers .
Each set of quantum numbers corresponds to a quantum state that the electron may
occupy.
In addition to the three quantum numbers, there is an important quantization condition
on the “spin” of the electron.
The important point for our discussion is that each allowed energy state of the electron
in the hydrogen atom is uniquely described by four quantum numbers: n, l, m and s.
The number n, called the principal quantum number, specifies the “orbit” of the electron
in Bohr terminology. Of course, the concept of orbit is replaced by probability density
functions in quantum mechanical calculations.
The solution of the wave equation may be designated by Ψnlm, For the lowest energy
state, n =1, l=0 and m=0, and the wave function is given by
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Electronic structure and energy levels in a Si atom: (a) the orbital model of a Si atom showing the 10 core electrons (n = 1
and 2), and the four valence electrons (n = 3);
Coulombic Potential well Since unlike charges attract each other, there is an attractive
potential between the negatively charged electrons and the positively charged nucleus.
As, a Coulomb potential varies as 1 /r as a function of distance from the charge, in this
case the Si nucleus. The potential energy gradually goes to zero when we approach infinity
Energy levels in the Columbic potential (well) of the nucleus are also shown schematically.
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states that, in any given system (an atom, molecule, or crystal), no two electrons may occupy
the same quantum state. In an atom, the exclusion principle means that no two electrons
may have the same set of quantum numbers. We will see that the exclusion principle is also
an important factor in determining the distribution of electrons among available energy
states in a crystal.
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