EEM 210 – Fundamentals of Semiconductor Devices

Prof. Dr. Nihan Kosku Perkgöz

Prof. Dr. Feridun Ay

Hafta 01
 Subjects

• Semiconductor Materials: Crystal Structure, Energy Bands, Density of States

• Carrier Concentration, Conductivity, Donors and Acceptors, Mobility
• Carrier Diffusion, Generation and Recombination Processes
• P-N Junction, Current-Voltage Characteristics, Diode Types and Applications
• Bipolar Devices: The Transistor Action, Modes of Operation, Frequency
Response
• Unipolar Devices: Metal-Semiconductor Contacts, JFET, MESFET, MOS Diode,
MOSFET
• Modern Fabrication and Experimental Techniques, State of the Art and Outlook
 Course Materials
Textbooks:
1) Solid State Electronic Devices
BEN G. STREETMAN AND SANJAY KUMAR BANERJEE

2) Semiconductor Physics and Devices, Basic Principles

DONALD A. NEAMEN

Grading:
Midterm: 30%
HW & Quiz: 30%
Final: 40%

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DIFFERENT SEMICONDUCTOR
APPLICATIONS - MATERIALS- DEVICES
COMPONENTS
Computers (integrated Silicon (Si) MOSFETs, Si
circuits (ICS), RAM, CMOS
DRAM), flash memory
cells
Mobile phones, WiFi Si ICs, GaAs FETs, BJTs
CD players, iPods AlGaAs and InGaP laser
diodes, Si photodiodes
Mobile terminals, TV Light emitting diodes
remotes (LEDs) Intel Core I5 11400
Satellite dishes InGaAs MMICs
Optical fiber networks InGaAsP laser diodes, pin
photodiodes
Automobile - traffic lights GaN LEDs (green, blue)
Anything intelligent Ge, Silicon (Si) MOSFETs,
BJTs,… GPU
 Transistors:Basic Concepts
Microelectronics: Small-scale electronic
components made from semiconductor.

Components: Resistors, capacitors,

inductors, diodes, transistors, …

Integrated circuit (IC): Electronic circuit

manufactured by lithography, or the
patterned diffusion of trace elements into
the surface of a thin substrate of
semiconductor material.

Lithography: A process used in

microfabrication to selectively remove parts
of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate.
 The highest transistor count in a consumer microprocessor as of June 2023 is 134 billion
transistors, in Apple's ARM-based dual-die M2 Ultra system on a chip, which is fabricated using
TSMC's 5 nm semiconductor manufacturing process.
MOSFET
scaling
(process nodes)

•20 µm – 1968
•10 µm – 1971
The designer refers to the •6 µm – 1974
technology company that •3 µm – 1977
• 1.5 µm – 1981
designs the logic of the •1 µm – 1984
integrated circuit chip (such •800 nm – 1987
•600 nm – 1990
as Nvidia and AMD). The •350 nm – 1993
manufacturer ("Fab.") refers •250 nm – 1996
•180 nm – 1999
to the semiconductor •130 nm – 2001
•90 nm – 2003
company that fabricates the •65 nm – 2005
chip using its •45 nm – 2007
•32 nm – 2009
semiconductor •22 nm – 2012
manufacturing process at a •14 nm – 2014
•10 nm – 2016
foundry (such as TSMC and •7 nm – 2018
Samsung Semiconductor). •5 nm – 2020
•3 nm – 2022

•Future2 nm ~
2024

By Max Roser, Hannah Ritchie - https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/11/Transistor-Count-over-time.png,

CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98219918

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count
 Microelectronic Devices and Circuits – Motivation

WHAT MAKES ICs SO IMPORTANT???

COST & PERFORMANCE

Before ICs, there were vacuum tubes- discrete electronic

components.
Using semiconductor device fabrication techniques, the integration
of large numbers of tiny transistors into a small chip became
possible (First patent- 1949).
• Mass production capability,
• Reliability, low-cost,
• Building-block approach.
 Why lower cost?
The chips are printed as a unit by photolithography
rather than being constructed one transistor at a time.
Packaged ICs use much less material than discrete
circuits
Discrete transistors

Integrated circuits

Photolithography selectively removes parts of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate.

It uses light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photomask to a light-sensitive
"resist" on the substrate.
 Why higher performance?

The IC's components switch quickly and consume comparatively little

power because of their small size and proximity.
Note: ~ 171.3 million transistors per mm2. (TSMC's 5 nanometer
node)
(Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company)

The main disadvantage of ICs is the high cost to design them

and fabricate the required photomasks. This high initial cost means
ICs are only commercially viable when high production volumes are
anticipated.
A small standard cell with three metal layers (dielectric has
been removed). The sand-colored structures are
metal interconnect, with the vertical pillars being contacts,
typically plugs of tungsten. The reddish structures are
polysilicon gates, and the solid at the bottom is the crystalline
silicon bulk.

9
 Why higher performance?

• The components switch quickly and consume little power

(compared to their discrete counterparts) as a result of the small
size and close proximity of the components.
• Note: ~ 171.3 million transistors per mm2. (TSMC's 5
nanometer node)

First integrated circuit: Created

by Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments)
in 1958. It contains a single
transistor and supporting
components.
Kilby won the 2000 Nobel Prize in
Physics for his part of the invention
of the integrated circuit.
 More definitions…

SSI, "small-scale integration" (SSI), transistors numbering in the tens (a few logic
gates).
MSI, "medium-scale integration", the next step in the development of integrated
circuits, in the late 1960s, introduced devices which contained hundreds of
transistors on each chip.
LSI, "large-scale integration" In the mid 1970s, with tens of thousands of transistors
per chip such as 1K-bit RAMs, calculator chips, and the first microprocessors…
VLSI, "very-large-scale integration", starting in the 1980s and continuing through
the present.
ULSI, for "ultra-large-scale integration" was proposed for chips of complexity of
more than 1 million transistors. A system-on-a-chip (SoC or SOC) is an integrated
circuit in which all the components needed for a computer or other system are
included on a single chip.
 Revolutions thanks to microelectronics
Microelectronics is the keystone of the technological revolutions
for
• Computers
• Communications
• Consumer electronics
Ex: Cellular Technology → Microelectronics exist in black
boxes that process the received and transmitted voice signals.
This figure shows
both the
capabilities of
Computer revolution computers and
their affordability.
Influence of microelectronics on computing
Since the first ICs were
Raymond Kurzweil titled “The used to build computers,
Age of Spiritual Machines”
computer performance
per dollar cost has
improved by over a factor
of one million!
 Electronics - Communications

Low power electronics enabling In last 20 years, communication

a variety of portable devices. bandwidth through a single
optical fiber has increased by
tenthousand fold.
State of the art -
Microelectronics

microprocessor

The number of levels of

interconnect technology:6
Upper interconnect layers on an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor die
 Moore’s Law

Moore's law is the observation that

over the history of computing
hardware, the number of transistors
on integrated circuits doubles
approximately every two years.

Benefits of increasing transistor

integration:
• system performance
• costperfunction,
• Powerperfunction,
The density has increased four orders of magnitude in the last 30 • system reliability.
years!
 Scaling down… Limit?

There are three key factors

limiting continued scaling in
CMOS:
1. Minimum dimensions that can
be fabricated
2. Diminishing returns in
switching performance
Gate lengths of order 0.2- 3. Off-state leakage
0.3 micron in size (-virus
size)
 Semiconductor Materials:

- Crystal Structure,
- Types of Solids
- Space Lattices
- Primitive and Unit Cell
- Basic Crystal Structures
- Crystal Planes and Miller lndices
- The Diamond Structure
- Energy Bands,
- Allowed and Forbidden Energy Bands
- Formation of Energy Bands
- The Kronig-Penney Model
- The k-Space Diagram
- Density of States
-
Basic Physics of Semiconductors

Semiconductor Materials
Elements with two to six valence electrons,
with Si being the most important.

Compounds:

• GaAs,
• InP,
• InGaAs,
• InGaAsP,
• ZnSe,
• CdTe
 1. Oxygen
2. Silicon
3. Aluminium
4. Iron
5. Calcium
6. Sodium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements
 Example for semiconductor materials

• Silicon
Cheap and abundant
Amazing mechanical, chemical and electronic
properties
Probably, the material best known to humankind.

Electronic structure of silicon atom:

• 10 core electrons (tightly bound)
• 4 valence electrons (loosely
bound, responsible for most of
the chemical properties)
When temperature goes up, electrons in
the covalent bond can become free.
 Si structure
• Diamond lattice: atoms tetrahedrally bonded by sharing valence
electrons
– covalent bonding
• Each atom shares 8 electrons
– low energy situation
• Si atomic density : 5 x 1022 cm-3

At 0 K: All bonds are

satisfied
– ⇒ all valence
electrons engaged in
bonding
– ⇒ No “free” electrons
 24

SILICON
a native oxide exists!
very low impurity
density

TRANSISTORS
SOLAR CELLS

Si
Nanocrystals
Good
mechanical, Cheap,
chemical and abundant,
electronic non-toxic
properties
 TYPES OF SOLIDS

Polycrystalline
Atomic order present in
sections (grains) of the solid. Single crystal
Amorphous
The structure is regular, but Atoms arranged
Continuous random
the crystals or grains are in a 3-D long
network structure of atoms
arranged in a random fashion. range order.
in an amorphous solid.
 CRYSTAL LATTICES

a (rhombic) primitive cell

centered rectangular
lattice (larger unit cell
but simpler to deal with)

In a crystalline solid, the atoms are arranged in a periodic fashion.

Lattice: Symmetric array of points in space. (Or the periodic arrangement of atoms in the
crystal)
The lattice contains a volume or cell that represents the entire lattice and is regularly
repeated throughout the crystal.
● Semiconductors

CRYSTAL LATTICES

• The simple cubic structure (sc) has an atom located at each corner of the unit cell.
• The body centered cubic (bcc) lattice has an additional atom at the center of the
cube.
• The face-centered cubic (fcc) unit cell has atoms at the eight corners and centered on
the six faces.
• All three structures have different primitive cells, but the same cubic unit cell.
CRYSTAL LATTICES

UNIT CELL (properties of the lattice )

-distances between nearest atoms and next nearest
atoms for calculation of the forces holding the lattice
together;
-the fraction of the unit cell volume filled by atoms;
-the density of the solid in relation with the atomic
arrangement
-the allowed energies of electrons that participate in
the conduction process.
→ Mechanical & Electrical properties
 3-D Crystal Structure
The packing of spheres in a face-
centered cubic cell of side a, such
that the nearest neighbors touch.
The dimension a for a cubic unit cell
is called the lattice constant.
In this configuration, the nearest
neighbor distance is one-half the
diagonal of a face.
Therefore, for the atom centered on
the face to just touch the atoms at
each corner of the face, the radius of
the sphere must be one-half the
nearest neighbor distance.
 Example 1
bcc: Each corner atom in a cubic unit cell is
shared with seven neighboring cells; thus,
each unit cell contains one-eighth of a
sphere at each of the eight corners for a total
of one atom. The bcc cell contains one atom
in the center of the cube.

If the atoms in a bcc lattice are packed as densely as

possible, with no distance between the outer edges
of nearest neighbors, 68% of the volume is filled.
This is a relatively high percentage compared with
some other lattice structures.
31
 3-D Crystal Structure

● A crystal is defined as a lattice with a basis added to each lattice

site. Usually the basis consists of an atom, a group of atoms or a
molecule.
● Crystal Structure  Primitive lattice structure + basis.
Translate the basis through all possible
lattice vectors r = n1a1+n2a2+n3a3 to
get the crystal structure of the
DIRECT LATTICE
 Zincblende/Diamond Lattices

Diamond Lattice Zincblende Lattice

The Cubic Unit Cell The Cubic Unit Cell

Many common semiconductors have diamond or zincblende crystal

structures
Tetrahedral coordination: Each atom has 4 nearest-neighbors.
Basis set: 2 atoms. Primitive lattice  face centered cubic (fcc).
Diamond or Zincblende  2 atoms per fcc lattice point.
Diamond: The 2 atoms are the same.
Zincblende: The 2 atoms are different.
 Also, many semiconductors have the
Wurtzite Structure

Tetrahedral coordination: Each atom has 4 nearest-neighbors

Basis set: 2 atoms. Primitive lattice  hexagonal close packed
(hcp).
2 atoms per hcp lattice point

A Unit Cell looks like

1. Find the intercepts of the plane
with the crystal axes and express
these intercepts as integral
multiples of the basis vectors (the
plane can be moved in and out
from the origin, retaining its
orientation, until such an integral
intercept is discovered on each
axis).
2. Take the reciprocals of the
three integers found in step 1
and reduce these to the smallest
set of integers h, k, and l, which
have the same relationship to
each other as the three
reciprocals.
3. Label the plane (hkl).
38
 Semiconductor Materials

Electronic band structure

Metal:
•no seperate conduction and valence band exist, electrons can move freely

Isolator (dielectric materials):

• band gap EG > 3eV

Semiconductor:
• isolator for deep temperatures (T = 0)

While all dielectrics are insulators (they don't allow

the flow of electric charges through them) all
insulators aren't dielectric because they can't store
charges unlike dielectrics.
Band gap formation

Valance electrons are

confined to third valance
shell (band)

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41
 Basis of Energy Bands
How are band gaps formed in a crystal Si or Ge crystal contains N atoms.
structure? The electron energy will be same if all
the atoms are isolated.
But in a crystal, the atoms are close
to each other (2 to 3 Å) and the
electrons interact with each other and
also with the neighbouring atomic
cores.
The overlap is felt by the electrons in
the outermost orbit (not by the ones in
the inner orbit ).
The number of electrons in the
outermost orbit is 4 (2s and 2p
electrons). → The total number of
outer electrons in the crystal is 4N.
Max. number of outer electrons in the
orbit is 8 (2s + 6p electrons).
Semiconductors

Basis of Energy Bands

How are band gaps formed in a crystal structure?

[Region A]
Out of the 4N electrons, 2N electrons
are in the 2N s-states and 2N
electrons are in the available 6N p-
states.
→Some p-electron states are empty
When these atoms start coming
nearer to each other to form a solid,
the energies of these electrons may
change (both increase and decrease)
due to the interaction between the
electrons of different atoms.
● Semiconductors

Basis of Energy Bands

How are band gaps formed in a crystal structure?

[Region B]
The 6N states which originally had
identical energies in the isolated
atoms, spread out and form an
energy band.
Similarly, the 2N states having
identical energies split into a
second band separated from the
first one by an energy gap.
 Basis of Energy Bands
How are band gaps formed in a crystal structure?
[Region C]
At still smaller spacing, however, there
comes a region in which the bands
merge with each other.
No energy gap exists where the upper
and lower energy states get mixed.
[Region D]
Finally, at lower spacings, the energy
bands again split apart and are
separated by an energy gap Eg.
The total number of available energy
states 8N has been re-apportioned
between the two bands (4N states each
in the lower and upper energy bands).
Semiconductors

Basis of Energy Bands

How are band gaps formed in a crystal structure?

[Region D]
There are exactly as many states in
the lower band (4N) as there are
available valence electrons from the
atoms (4N).
Therefore, the band (called the
valence band) is completely filled
while the upper band is completely
empty. The upper band is called the
conduction band.
Bandgap

Metal Insulator Semiconductor

Bandgap – direct or indirect
 52

Gallium arsenide (GaAs)

• Microwave frequency integrated circuits,

infrared light-emitting diodes,
• laser diodes,
• solar cells and
• optical windows.
 Gallium arsenide (GaAs) 53

Advantages:
• Higher saturated electron velocity and higher electron
mobility,
• Insensitive to heat owing to wider bandgap.
• Less noise than silicon devices, especially at high
frequencies.
• Suitable for mobile phones, satellite communications,
microwave point-to-point links and higher frequency
radar systems, space electronics (used in Space War
program for the US Department of Defense but the
processors were very expensive).
• Emits and absorbs light efficiently.
• Complex layered structures of gallium arsenide in
combination with aluminium arsenide (AlAs) or the
alloy AlxGa1-xAs can be grown using molecular beam
epitaxy (MBE) or using metalorganic vapor phase
epitaxy (MOVPE).
 Gallium arsenide (GaAs)

● Advantages of Si to GaAs:

○ Abundant and cheap to process.

○ Extremely stable structure mechanically.

○ Grown to very large diameter boules.

○ Processed with very high yields.

○ Enables very dense packing of transistors

that need to get rid of their heat of
operation.

○ There exists a native oxide (silicon

dioxide), which is used as an insulator -
 Gallium arsenide (GaAs)
● Advantages of Si to GaAs:

○ Much higher hole mobility. This high mobility allows

the fabrication of higher-speed P-channel field effect
transistors, which are required for CMOS logic.

○ Because they lack a fast CMOS structure, GaAs logic

circuits have much higher power consumption, which
has made them unable to compete with silicon logic
circuits.

○ Silicon has a nearly perfect lattice, impurity density is

very low and allows to build very small structures
(currently down to 25 nm). GaAs in contrast has a
very high impurity density, which makes it difficult to
build ICs with small structures, so the 500 nm process
is a common process for GaAs.
DIFFERENT APPLICATIONS - SEMICONDUCTOR MATERIALS-
COMPONENTS DEVICES
Computers (integrated circuits (ICS), Silicon (Si) MOSFETs, Si CMOS
RAM, DRAM), flash memory cells
Mobile phones, WiFi Si ICs, GaAs FETs, BJTs
CD players, iPods AlGaAs and InGaP laser diodes, Si
photodiodes
Mobile terminals, TV remotes Light emitting diodes (LEDs)
Satellite dishes InGaAs MMICs
Optical fiber networks InGaAsP laser diodes, pin
photodiodes
Automobile - traffic lights GaN LEDs (green, blue)
Anything intelligent Silicon (Si) MOSFETs, BJTs,…
an important example…

BLUE LED

Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura

By using blue LEDs, white light can be created in a new way.
With the advent of LED lamps we now have more long-lasting and more efficient alternatives to older
light sources.
The white LED lamps are energy-efficient, long-lasting and emit a bright White light. Moreover, and
unlike fluorescent lamps, they do not contain mercury.
Red and green light-emitting diodes have been with us for almost half a century, but blue light was
needed to really revolutionize lighting technology. Only the triad of red, green and blue can produce the
white light that illuminates the world for us. Despite the high stakes and great efforts undertaken in the
research community as well as in industry, blue light remained a challenge for three decades.
In the LED, electricity is directly converted into light particles, photons, leading to efficiency gains
compared to other light sources where most of the electricity is converted to heat and only a small
amount into light.
The most recent record for an LED is just over 300 lumen/watt, which can be compared to 16 for
regular light bulbs and close to 70 for fluorescent lamps.
As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the highly energy-
efficient LEDs contribute to saving the Earth’s resources.
 BLUE LED LAMP

LEDs are also more long-lasting than other lamps. Incandescent bulbs tend to
last 1,000 hours, as heat destroys the filament, while fluorescent lamps usually
last around 10,000 hours. LEDs can last for 100,000 hours, thus greatly reducing
materials consumption.
Useful links and sources

Bandgap formation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVc1S2CO4qg

Making Memory Chips – Process Steps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-wNC3Z3ZX4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoeJQBZqqRo

Sand to Silicon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvluuAIiA50

VLSI Fabrication Process

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwNkg1fsqBY

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Please read the highlighted parts in the textbook, Solid State Electronic Devices STREETMAN AND BANERJEE

Until here for this week

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Please read the highlighted parts in the textbooks, Solid State Electronic Devices STREETMAN AND BANERJEE

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