PHT.301 Physics of Semiconductor Devices

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Outline

Introduction

Electrons in crystals

Intrinsic Semiconductors

Extrinsic Semiconductors

Transport

pn junctions

Contacts

JFETs/MESFETs

MOSFETs

Bipolar transistors

Opto-electronics

Lectures

Books

Exam questions

Html basics

TUG students

Student projects

      

Student projects

Every student must contribute something that will improve the course for students in the future. Anything that you think will help other students is possible. Please discuss your project with Peter Hadley before starting.

    Possible projects
  • Make a list of important equations and a list of skills students should know for the exam something like these pages for the Physik M course: Formulas, Skills.
  • Make an html page that describe some software packages that are useful for this course such as Minimos NT, CASINO, or SRIM.
  • This course makes use of a number of interactive web pages that have been partly written by students. If you have experience with web programming, this could be a good option. Examples of such pages are linked in the : course outline. Some properties that could be programmed are:
    • Capacitance-voltage measurements of a diode
    • Voltage-current characteristics of a diode including the nonideality factor. This should be plotted on a linear scale and a logarithmic scale.
    • IDS vs. VDS for a p-MESFETs
    • ID vs. VG for a MOSFET, JFET, or MODFET
  • Some students work at a semiconductor company and are experts on a certain device or process. It would be useful for them to write a description or video about this device or process. It can also be useful to provide a few slides for a lecture.
  • Some students have struggled with understanding a certain concept (possibly because it was explained poorly in the lecture). Once these students have understood the topic they have written an explanation or made a video. Sometimes it is enough to say in which book or website the topic is explained clearly. The explanation can be written in Mathjax/html and linked from the course outline.
  • There are a few cases where it is important to really understand the derivation of a result. Make a webpage or video that explains one of the topics listed here. There is an example video on the derivation of the Fermi energy in an intrinsic semiconductor.
    • Calculate the current for a long and short pn diode.
    • Calculate the current of a Schottky diode.
    • Derive the formula for the subthreshold current of a MOSFET.
    • Calculate the emitter and collector currents of a bipolar transistor.
    • Use a simulation program to solve for the current density distribution in a transistor for different bias regimes.
  • Calculate the current in a thyristor in a similar way to the way the emitter current of a bipolar transistor was calculated. For this we need an expression for the base transport factor.
  • Derive the formulas on the page on Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors
  • Make a solution to one of the exam questions given in the exam questions section. Please provide your contributions formatted as Mathjax and html. Figures should be hand drawn like they would be during an exam.
  • All webpages get outdated and have dead links. A project could be to update part of the website but getting rid of the old material and including newer, more useful links.