1 Obtaining Conduction…

Inorganic (diamond). Lets say we have some sort of material…

any material, how do we get electrical
conduction?

To make a material electrically conductive, we

need some way to get charged carriers (like
electrons) free from the atoms… So that if we
apply E-field, they will start to drift in the E-
field…

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Obviously the charges for an atom are happy to stay with the atom,
Organic (bunch of C-H so how do we get them free? Bonding with other atoms!
bonds, like plastics)
Metals (Al, Cu, Au…) - Bond one or more types of atoms such that
bond, share electrons, and favor freeing up a flood of electrons.

Semiconductors (Si, GaAs, GaN…) - Bond one or more types of

atoms such that bond, share electrons, with a little energy (heat) can
free up some electrons.

Insulators (SiN, Al2O3…) - Bond one or more types of atoms such that
bonds share electrons, but it takes a lot of energy to free up electrons.

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 2 Crystallinity?

Metals (Al, Cu, Au…) –

Energy to free up electrons is
zero or so low that
crystallinity not as important.

Semiconductors (Si, GaAs,

GaN…) – Freeing up the
electrons is more sensitive to
crystallinity. You have just Crystalline. Polycrystalline. Amorphous.
enough energy to free up a
Highest performance, Medium performance, Lowest performance,

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few electrons, crystal defects
can kill (recapture) these highest cost for Si. medium cost for Si. lowest cost for Si (low
temperature fabrication).
electrons or make it hard to
move them…

Insulators (SiN, Al2O3…) – Wafers for

processors Formed on
Energy to free up electrons is
plastic
so large that crystallinity not
as important. Solar
cells

How make? See Fig. 1-10.

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 3 Semiconductor Bands
Si bonds in a Each Si atom covalently bonds with So they like to
‘diamond’ style lattice another Si atom (each sharing 1 electron) share electrons, but
(unit cell shown at right)which effectively completes its outer shell… how do we free one
up?

3 4 5 6 7 8

1 nm

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 4 Semiconductor Bands
Let’s take a closer look at 0K, lots of electrons but At T=300K some electrons get
they are all stuck with Si atoms… (valence band) enough energy to leave the
valance band and make it to the
Is a band But we draw it this
conduction band…
(lots of states) way for simplicity…
E
conduction T=0K T=300K
band Si Si Si Si
EC EC
bandgap Si Si Si Si

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valence EV EV
Si Si Si Si
band

Removing negative electron leaves behind a positively charged ‘hole’, a hole is the
absence of an electron!
At 300K, obviously this thermal generation of electrons and holes does not go on
forever… electrons and holes have a lifetime after which they recombine with each other
and disappear…
AND, electrons can move freely through the lattice in electric field (conduction!)
AND, holes can be traded between adjacent Si atoms (also conduction!)

Which is easier… which type will have higher mobility typically? Think of a line of students
and throwing a football from one end to other, or pass it one person at a time…
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 5 Metal, Semicon, Insulator

Now, lets revisit the difference between metals, semiconductors, and insulators…
Semiconductor (Si, GaAs, etc..): at 300K
some, but not all, electrons make it to Insulator (SiO2, Al2O3): energy bandgap is
conduction band… so large that at 300K almost no electrons
E can make it to the conduction band...
conduction E
band conduction
EC band
EC
bandgap

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valence EV
band bandgap

Metal (Al, Cu, etc...): at 300K some bands

are so close or they overlap such that a flood
of electrons are freed up… valence EV
band
E conduction
band
valence
band Okay. Great! But for semiconductors how can we
calculate how many electrons and holes we have?

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 Fermi Distribution!

f (E) =1/(1+ e (E-E F )/ kT

)
0K

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f(E) simply gives the
300 K probability of finding an
electron at an energy E:
@E=Ef … 1/2
EF is the 50% point
@E<<Ef … 1
@E>>Ef …. 0
k is the Boltzmann constant

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 7 Semiconductor Bands

n = density of
electrons (e-), 1/cc

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p = density of
holes (h+), 1/cc

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 8 Semiconductor Bands & Doping

Effective Density of States: Density of States X Fermi Dist. = Carrier Conc.

3/2
æ 2p m kT ö*
e
N c,v = 2ç ÷
n, p

è h ø
2

Fermi Distribution: h

f (E) =1/(1+ e (E-E F )/ kT

)

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Carrier Concentration:
n0, p0, n0n, p0n, n0p, p0p
‘0’ = thermal equilib.

Notice how the majority carrier increases

and the minority carrier decreases
compared to intrinsic material… why? Has
something to do with recombination…

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 9 Semiconductor Bands & Doping
Again, doping level shifts the Fermi Level (which it should!
right!)

Again, notice the increased overlap of the Fermi Function

with the density of states for conduction band, and reduced
overlap with density of states for the valence band…

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EECE2077-Semiconductor Devices NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Power System Simulation
 10 MATLAB Example 1
Using MATLAB to plot f(E) vs. T… Adapted from Pierret, Ex 2.3

%Fermi Function Calculation, f(E-EF,T)

%Constant
k=8.617e-5;
%Computation proper
for ii=1:4;

T=100*ii;

kT=k*T;

dE(ii,1)=-5*kT;

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for jj=1:101

f(ii,jj)=1/(1+exp(dE(ii,jj)/kT));

dE(ii,jj+1)=dE(ii,jj)+0.1*kT;

end

end

dE=dE(:,1:jj); %This step strips the extra dE value

%Plotting result
Close
plot(dE',f'); grid; %Note the transpose (') to form data columns
xlabel('E-EF(eV)'); ylabel('f(E)');
text(.05,.2,'T=400K'); text(-.03,.1,'T=100K');

EECE2077-Semiconductor Devices NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Power System Simulation