ETU 07103

Lecture 1

Lecture 1 Electronic Devices 1

 LECTURE 1
 Coverage
1. Introduction to electronic devices
2. Fundamentals of semiconductors
2.1 Semiconductors materials
• Introduction
• Atomic structure and energy level
• Intrinsic semiconductors
• Extrinsic semiconductors
• Majority and minority charge carriers

 References
• A textbook of electronics, 2nd Ed. by S.L. Kakani, pg. 1 to 30
• Electronic devices and circuits, 6th Ed. by Theodore F. Bogart,
Jr., page 19 to 31
• Electronic devices and circuit theory, 6th Ed. by Robert L.
Boylestad & Louis Nashelsky, page 3 to 10
• Basi electronics devices circuit and IT fundamentals by
Santiram Kal, website: http://books.google.com , pg. 1 to 25

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 1. Introduction to Electronic Devices
 Introduction
• Electronic devices/components
Physical entities capable of controlling the motion of electrons or
their associated fields through different media.
• Electron
The key particle, flow of which through a medium gives current
• Electronics
Branch of science and technology which makes use of the
controlled motion of electrons.

 Electronic components category

• Passive Components
 Contribute no power gain (amplification) to a circuit or system
 Does not require any input other than a signal to perform its function
 The most common used passive components; resistors, capacitors,
and inductors

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 Introduction continue…
• Active Components
 Contribute power gain (amplification) to a circuit or system
 Require input other than a signal to perform its function
 The most commonly used active components; diodes and
transistors
 Classification of electronics materials
• Conductors
Have an abundance of free electrons that act as charge carriers, which
means that they have high conductivity.
• Insulators
Have hardly any free electrons, hence offers very low level of
conductivity.
• Semiconductors
Have a conductivity level somewhere between the extremes of an
insulator and a conductor.

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 Introduction continue…
- The term resistivity is often used when comparing the resistance levels of
materials.
- Typical resistivity values for three broad categories of materials are
shown in table 1.1

Table 1.1 Typical electrical resistivity values of different materials

(at 200 C in Ωcm)

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 Introduction continue…
- Of the three classes of materials, semiconductors are the most
important in electronics engineering. Reasons:
 Their conductivity can be significantly altered in several different ways
 They can be manufactured to a very high purity level in the ratio of
1:10,000,000,000. (i.e. 1 part in 10 billions )

- In fact, some of these unique qualities of semiconductors, makes them

to be the most prominent materials in the development of electronic
devices
- For the other two remaining materials, their conductivity can not be
readily and significantly altered.

After having this little introduction in electronic devices, now let set our
minds toward the semiconductor materials which have received the
broadest range of interest in the development of electronic devices.

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 2. Fundamentals of Semiconductors
 Semiconductor materials
- The most commonly used semiconductors
• Silicon (Si)
• Germanium (Ge)
• The compound semiconductors (i.e. consisting of compound materials)

- Compound semiconductors are general formed from either

• Two different elements, and is referred to as binary compound
• Three different elements, and is referred to as ternary compound or
• Four different elements, and is referred to as quaternary compound

- The III-V compound semiconductors are the most important

• Examples of III-V compounds: gallium arsenide (GaAs), indium phosphide
(InP), aluminum arsenide (AlAs), indium arsenide (InAs), etc.

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
 Atomic structure
• Atomic structure
 Matter is composed of elements and compounds
 The elements are the basic materials found in nature
 Compounds are the combination of more than one element
 The smallest particle that an element can be reduced to and still
retain its properties is called an atom
 The atom is composed of three basic particles: the electron, the
proton, and the neutron
 The protons and neutrons form the nucleus, while the electrons
revolve around the nucleus in a fixed orbit
 The electrons and protons are the particles that have the electrical
properties (i.e. negative and positive charge respectively)
 Usually atoms have the same number of electrons and protons, and
so they are electrically neutral
 Atom with more electrons is called a negative iron while atom with
more protons is called a positive iron

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
 Figure 1.1 shows the representations of the atomic structures of Ge and Si
atoms

Figure 1.1 Atomic structure: (a) germanium; (b) silicon

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
 The electrons in the inner shells of an atom do not normally leave
the atom
 The electrons in the outermost shells may travel from one atom to
another in a crystal lattice
 These electrons are called as free electrons
 The tendency of an atom to give up it valence electrons depends on
chemical stability
 The level of stability is determined by the number of valence
electrons
 The atoms tends to fill its outermost shell if it is more than half filled
 Atoms with 5 or more valence electrons make good insulators, since
they tend to accept rather than giving up electrons
 Atoms with less than 4 valence electrons make the best electrical
conductors, since they tend to give up their electrons
 The element Ge and Si have 4 valence electrons, and are neither
good conductors and nor good insulators. These are called
semiconductors.

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
• Crystal structure of semiconductors
 The atoms of both elements form a very definite pattern
 The formed pattern is periodic in nature
 One complete pattern is called a crystal
 The periodic arrangement of the atoms within a crystal is called a
lattice
 For Ge and Si the crystal has three-dimensional diamond structure
 Figure 1.2 shows a two dimensional crystal structure of Si

Figure 1.2 A simplified representation of the Si crystal structure

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
From figure 1.2
 Si atom acquire stability by sharing the valence electrons of four of
its neighboring atoms
 Every atom duplicates this process and the result is a stable and
tightly bound crystal
 Strong bound within a crystal between valence electrons and their
parent atom can be broken by natural causes
 The broken covalent bond produce free electrons

• Energy levels of isolated atom

 Each isolated atom has only a certain number of orbits available
 These available orbits represent energy levels for the electrons in
the atom as shown in figure 1.3
 According to Bohr’s theory of atomic structure only discrete values
of electron energies are possible
 An electron can have only certain permissible values
 No electron can exist at an energy level other than a permissible
one
 The more the distant the electron from the nucleus, the higher the
energy state

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
 Electron that has left its parent atom has a higher energy state than
any electron in the atomic structure
 An electron energy is usually expressed in electronvolt (eV)
 Electronvolt (eV) is the energy acquired by one electron if it is
accelerated through a potential difference of one volt

Figure 1.3 Energy levels of an isolated silicon atom

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
• Energy band diagrams of a solid crystal
 The energy level diagram of Fig. 1.3 is no longer applicable in a
solid
 A solid crystal is formed when atoms bond together
 In the solid, the single orbit is influenced not only by the electrons in
its own atom but by electrons of the same orbit with slightly different
energy levels from an adjoining atom
 The net result is an expansion of the discrete permissible energy
levels as shown in Fig. 1.4

From figure 1.4

 Beyond the valence band there is a conduction band
 The gap between these two bands is called forbidden energy gap
(Eg)
 Thus, Eg is the amount of energy that should be imparted to the
electrons in a valence band to jump to conduction band
 At absolute zero temperature, the conduction band is empty
 At room temperature a larger number of valence electrons leave the
valence band, cross the energy gap, and enter the conduction band

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
 Thus an equal number of vacancies are created in the valence band
 These vacancies in valence band may be treated as positively
charged particles called holes

Figure 1.4 Energy band of a silicon crystal

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
 The holes moves from higher electron energies to lower energies

 The electrons in conduction band and holes in valence band carry electric
current

 The forbidden energy gap helps to classify solids as conductors, insulators,

and semiconductors as shown in figure 1.5

Figure 1.5 Energy band diagrams

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…

From Fig. 1.5

 For conductors, valence band and conduction band overlap each
other (fig. 1.5a)
 Eg = 0. This implies that a larger number of valence electrons are
available for conduction at room temperature
 For insulators (fig. 1.5c), Eg is equal or more than 5 eV, which
severely limits the number of electrons that can enter the conduction
band at room temperature
 For semiconductors in pure crystalline form, Eg lies in the range o.1-
3 eV
 Thus, appreciable number of electron-hole pairs is created by
thermal process
 Increasing temperature causes creation of more electron-hole pairs,
hence resistivity falls

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
- The number of electrons in conduction band or holes in valence
band per unit volume in an ideally pure and perfect semiconductor
crystal is called intrinsic carrier concentration (ni or pi)
- Table 1.2 Indicate Eg values and intrinsic carrier concentration of
some important semiconductor materials at room temperature

Table 1.2 Properties of some useful semiconductors

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
 Intrinsic Semiconductors
• Introduction
 A semiconductor in its purest form is called an intrinsic
semiconductor
 The electron density in electrons/cm3, equals the hole density,
holes/cm3, in an intrinsic semiconductor (i.e. ni = pi)
 At room temperature, the charge carrier densities for Ge and Si are
approximated to be ni = pi = 2.4 x 1013 carriers/cm3 and ni = pi = 1.5 x
1010 carriers/cm3 respectively

• Conduction in intrinsic semiconductor

 Both electrons and holes act as charge carriers in semiconductors
 When an electric field E is applied in a semiconductor, it causes free
electrons to drift in one direction and holes to drift in the other
 These two components of current add, rather than cancel
 The total current due to the electric field is called the drift current
 The drift current depends, among other factors, on the ability of the
charge carriers to move through the semiconductor

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
 The measure of this ability to move is called drift mobility and has the
symbol μ. Drift mobility depends the type of carrier and the kind of
materials
 Thus the total current density due to holes and electrons is
J = Jn + Jp = nqnμnE + pqpμpE …………………………... (1.1)
= nqnvn + pqpvp

Where J = current density , A/m2

n, p = electron and hole densities, carries/m3
qn = qp = unit electron charge = 1.6 x 10-19 c
μn, μp = electron and hole mobilities, m2/(V.s)
vn, vp = electron and hole velocities, m/s

Note: The conductivity of a semiconductor can be computed using

σ = nqnμn + pqpμp ………………………………………….. (1.2)
Where σ = conductivity, 1/(Ω.m), or siemens/meter (S/m)

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
Exercise1.1 A potential difference 12V is applied
across the ends of the intrinsic silicon bar with
length 0.6 cm, width 20 mm, and height 20
mm. Assume that ni = 1.5 x 1010 electrons/cm3,
μn = 0.14 m2/(V.s), and μp = 0.05 m2/(V.s), find
1. The electron and hole velocities
2. The electron and hole components of the
current density
3. The total current density and
4. The total current in the bar

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
 Extrinsic semiconductors
• Introduction
 Pure Si and Ge are not suitable for any use except in the
manufacture of heat and light sensitive resistance
 Their conductivity can, however, be altered significantly by addition of
suitable impurity in a very small proportional
 The process of adding impurity to a pure semiconductor is called
doping
 The added impurity is called a dopant
 A doped semiconductor is called extrinsic semiconductor
 There are two types of extrinsic semiconductors: n-type and p-type

• n-type semiconductor
 The n-type is formed by doping pentavalent impurity atoms like P, As,
Sb, etc, at a very low level in Si/Ge
 This process creates excess unbound electrons in conduction band
 When group V atom (i.e. As) is added to the Si/Ge crystal, the fifth
valence electrons of As does not enter a covalence bond of Si/Ge
and it is loosely bound to its parent atom and it is called free electron
as shown in Fig. 1.6 (a)

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
 The impurity atom with five valence electrons is called donor atom

Figure 1.6 Covalent bond structure of (a) arsenic doped n-type silicon and
(b) boron p-type silicon

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
• P-type semiconductor
 The p-type is formed by doping a pure Si/Ge crystal with impurity
atoms having three valence electrons
 The elements which can be used for this purpose are; boron,
gallium, indium and aluminium
 After doping, there will be insufficient number of electrons to
complete the covalent bond of newly formed crystal latice
 The resulting vacancy is called a hole
 The impurity atom with three valence electrons are called acceptor
atom
 Fig. 1.6 (b) shows unfilled covalent bond, as the fourth bond is
empty since boron has only three electrons to share

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Fundamentals of semiconductors continue…
• Majority and minority carriers
 In an n-type material (Fig. 1.7a) the electron is called the majority
carrier and the hole the minority carrier.
 In a p-type material (Fig. 1.7b) the hole is the majority carrier and
the electron is the minority carrier.

Figure 1.7 (a) n-type semiconductor material; (b) p-type

semiconductor material

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 THE END OF
LECTURE 1

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