Ebook: Semiconductor Physics: An Introduction

Televisions, telephones, watches, calculators, robots, airplanes and space vehicles all depend on silicon chips. Life as we know it would hardly be possible without semiconductor devices. An understanding of how these devices work requires a detailed knowledge of the physics of semiconductors, including charge transport and the emission and absorption of electromagnetic waves. This book may serve both as a university textbook and as a reference for research and microelectronics engineering. Each section of the book begins with a description of an experiment. The theory is then developed as far as necessary to understand the experimental results. Everyone with high-school mathematics should be able to follow the calculations. A band structure calculation for the diamond lattice is supplemented with a personal computer program. Semiconductor physics developed most rapidly in the two decades following the invention of the transistor, and naturally most of the references date from this time. But recent developments such as the Gunn effect, the acoustoelectric effect, superlattices, quantum well structures, and the integral and fractional quantum Hall effect are also discussed. The book has appeared in translation in Russian, Chinese and Japanese.

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Televisions, telephones, watches, calculators, robots, airplanes and space vehicles all depend on silicon chips. Life as we know it would hardly be possible without semiconductor devices. An understanding of how these devices work requires a detailed knowledge of the physics of semiconductors, including charge transport and the emission and absorption of electromagnetic waves. This book may serve both as a university textbook and as a reference for research and microelectronics engineering. Each section of the book begins with a description of an experiment. The theory is then developed as far as necessary to understand the experimental results. Everyone with high-school mathematics should be able to follow the calculations. A band structure calculation for the diamond lattice is supplemented with a personal computer program. Semiconductor physics developed most rapidly in the two decades following the invention of the transistor, and naturally most of the references date from this time. But recent developments such as the Gunn effect, the acoustoelectric effect, superlattices, quantum well structures, and the integral and fractional quantum Hall effect are also discussed. The book has appeared in translation in Russian, Chinese and Japanese.
Content:
Front Matter....Pages I-XIV
Elementary Properties of Semiconductors....Pages 1-9
Energy Band Structure....Pages 10-33
Semiconductor Statistics....Pages 34-45
Charge and Energy Transport in a Nondegenerate Electron Gas....Pages 46-112
Carrier Diffusion Processes....Pages 113-152
Scattering Processes in a Spherical One-Valley Model....Pages 153-213
Charge Transport and Scattering Processes in the Many-Valley Model....Pages 214-255
Carrier Transport in the Warped-Sphere Model....Pages 256-269
Quantum Effects in Transport Phenomena....Pages 270-290
Impact Ionization and Avalanche Breakdown....Pages 291-301
Optical Absorption and Reflection....Pages 302-385
Photoconductivity....Pages 386-401
Light Generation by Semiconductors....Pages 402-424
Properties of the Surface....Pages 425-435
Miscellaneous Semiconductors....Pages 436-444
Back Matter....Pages 445-481

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Televisions, telephones, watches, calculators, robots, airplanes and space vehicles all depend on silicon chips. Life as we know it would hardly be possible without semiconductor devices. An understanding of how these devices work requires a detailed knowledge of the physics of semiconductors, including charge transport and the emission and absorption of electromagnetic waves. This book may serve both as a university textbook and as a reference for research and microelectronics engineering. Each section of the book begins with a description of an experiment. The theory is then developed as far as necessary to understand the experimental results. Everyone with high-school mathematics should be able to follow the calculations. A band structure calculation for the diamond lattice is supplemented with a personal computer program. Semiconductor physics developed most rapidly in the two decades following the invention of the transistor, and naturally most of the references date from this time. But recent developments such as the Gunn effect, the acoustoelectric effect, superlattices, quantum well structures, and the integral and fractional quantum Hall effect are also discussed. The book has appeared in translation in Russian, Chinese and Japanese.
Content:
Front Matter....Pages I-XIV
Elementary Properties of Semiconductors....Pages 1-9
Energy Band Structure....Pages 10-33
Semiconductor Statistics....Pages 34-45
Charge and Energy Transport in a Nondegenerate Electron Gas....Pages 46-112
Carrier Diffusion Processes....Pages 113-152
Scattering Processes in a Spherical One-Valley Model....Pages 153-213
Charge Transport and Scattering Processes in the Many-Valley Model....Pages 214-255
Carrier Transport in the Warped-Sphere Model....Pages 256-269
Quantum Effects in Transport Phenomena....Pages 270-290
Impact Ionization and Avalanche Breakdown....Pages 291-301
Optical Absorption and Reflection....Pages 302-385
Photoconductivity....Pages 386-401
Light Generation by Semiconductors....Pages 402-424
Properties of the Surface....Pages 425-435
Miscellaneous Semiconductors....Pages 436-444
Back Matter....Pages 445-481
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