Note:

This course will run the second 5 weeks of the fall semester and is available through PEO, or online for WL students. Students will have access to the instructor through a discussion forum and by office hours. If there is sufficient enrollment, weekly help sessions will be scheduled.

Counts as:

Experimental Course Offered:

Fall 2018

Requisites by Topic:

Undergraduate physics, chemistry and mathematics

Catalog Description:

This course is about semiconductors designed to provide the necessary foundation to understand the operation of semiconductor devices such as transistors, diodes, solar cells, light-emitting devices, etc. The deep understanding needed by researchers advancing the state-of-the-art in semiconductor materials and devices requires deep knowledge of concepts from condensed matter physics, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics. This course is designed for ECE students whose interests are in the application of semiconductor devices in circuits and systems as well as for students from other disciplines seeking an understanding of semiconductors from an electrical engineering perspective. The treatment of fundamentals is descriptive and intuitive. the course prepares students to understand the operation of semiconductor devices and provides a starting point for those who wish to go deeper. Semiconductor fundamentals such as bandgaps, effective masses, electrons and holes, the Fermi function, doping and carrier densities, carrier transport and generation-recombination are discussed as is the important concepts of quasi-Fermi levels. The course concludes with the "semiconductor equations," which provide a complete, mathematical description of electrons and holes in semiconductors (subject to some important simplifying assumptions) and with a discussion of how energy band diagrams provide a qualitative solution to these equations.

Lecture Outline:

Assessment Method:

online lecture quizzes and exam