Course catalog description: Semiconductor fundamentals, pn diodes, bipolar transistors, Schottky diodes, heterojunctions, JFETs, MESFETs, and MOSFETs.
Credits and contact hours: 3 credits; 1 hour and 20-minute session twice a week, every week
Pre-Requisite courses: 14:332:361
Co-Requisite courses: None
Topics Covered:
- Crystal structure, Bohr’s atom, Valence-bond model of solid and energy-band model of solid.
- Effective mass, intrinsic & extrinsic semiconductors, free carrier and carrier concentration and Fermi-level.
- Scattering and Drift, Mobility, Hall Effect, excess carriers.
- Surface recombination, electrostatic field and built-in electric field, Quasi-Fermi level, basic governing equations.
- PN junction electrostatics, equilibrium and depletion approximation.
- Reverse bias transition capacitance, breakdown in PN junctions.
- PN junction under forward bias, minority carrier injection, DC current-voltage characteristics, Temperature effect.
- Non-ideal diodes, tunneling diodes, AC Analysis, charge storage and transient characteristics
- Bipolar transistors, derivation of I-V and current gain expressions, Equivalent circuits, Frequency response.
- Transistor as a switch, breakdown voltage, pnpn structures, Schottky barrier diodes, Image-force lowing effect.
- Schottky diodes vs. PN diodes, Ohmic contacts, Schottky diode fabrication and applications. Heterojunctions.
- Theory of JFET, DC and AC characteristics, MESFET’s. Enhanced JFET and MESFETs. Ideal MOS structure
- MOS capacitors, flatband and threshold voltages, Static MOS transistor.
- MOS transistor equivalent circuit, cutoff frequency, Body effect, MOS device fabrication.
Textbook: Robert F. Pierret, Semiconductor Device Fundamentals, Addison-Wesley.
Other supplemental material: Neamen, Semiconductor Physics and Devices, McGraw Hill; Edward S. Yang, Microelectronic Devices, McGraw-Hill.