Semiconductor Fundamentals

Semiconductors are everywhere - inside smartphones and tablet computers, powering the Internet and communications satellites, generating electricity from the sun, and much more. This gentle introduction to semiconductor physics, chemistry, and materials science provides the background needed to understand the operation of devices such as transistors and solar cells.

ECE59500

Credit Hours:

1

Description:

Semiconductors are everywhere - inside smartphones and tablet computers, powering the Internet and communications satellites, generating electricity from the sun, and much more. This gentle introduction to semiconductor physics, chemistry, and materials science provides the background needed to understand the operation of devices such as transistors and solar cells.

Topics include bandgap, band structure, effective masses, electrons and holes, the Fermi function, intrinsic carrier density, doping, carrier transport and generation-recombination.The important concept of quasi-Fermi levels is introduced, and the course concludes with the semiconductor equations, which provide a complete, mathematical description of electrons and holes in semiconductors (subject to important simplifying assumptions) and with a discussion of how energy band diagrams provide a qualitative solution to these equations.

Topics Covered:

Microelectronics and Nanotechnology

Prerequisites:

Undergraduate physics, chemistry, and mathematics.

Exams:

Two exams

Textbooks:

All reading materials will be provided within the course.

Instructor(s)

Dallas Morisette

Phone
(765) 807-2873
Email
morisett@purdue.edu