Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4

Electronic Devices
Dr. Rami Ghannam

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Energy Band Structures

Atomic number

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Energy Band Structures
When atoms combine to
form substances, the
outermost shells, subshells
and orbitals merge,
providing a greater number
of available energy levels for
electrons to assume. When
large numbers of atoms are
close to each other, these
available energy levels form
a nearly continuous band
wherein electrons may
move.
3002 Electronic Devices 3
Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Energy Band Structures

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Energy Band Structures

Valence & Conduction Bands

●The valence band is completely filled with electrons and is
separated from an empty conduction band.
● An energy band gap lies between them.
●The difference between the two band structures lies in the
magnitude of the energy gap
● For insulators the band gap is wide.
● For semiconductors it is narrow.

3002 Electronic Devices 5

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Energy Band Structures

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Conduction & Energy States

● Energy States & Excitation in Semiconductor:

3002 Electronic Devices 7

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Important Semiconductors

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Semiconductivity
●In this lecture we develop a basic understanding of
the properties of intrinsic and extrinsic
semiconductors. Although most of our discussions and
examples will be based on Si, the ideas are applicable
to Ge and to the compound semiconductors such as
GaAs, InP, and others.
●By intrinsic Si we mean an ideal perfect crystal of
Si that has no impurities or crystal defects such as
dislocations and grain boundaries. The crystal thus
consists of Si atoms perfectly bonded (covalent) to
each other in the diamond structure.
3002 Electronic Devices
Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Semiconductivity
Covalent Bonds

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Semiconductivity

●When a Si-Si bond is broken, a "free" electron is

created that can wander around the crystal and
also contribute to electrical conduction in the
presence of an applied field.
●The broken bond has a missing electron that
causes this region to be positively charged.
●The vacancy left behind by the missing electron
in the bonding orbital is called a hole.

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Semiconductivity
Motion of electrons and holes

The concentration of intrinsic electrons n0 and intrinsic holes p0 are equal.

no = po = ni

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Semiconductivity
●In an intrinsic semiconductor, the number of electrons is equal to
the number of holes (broken bonds). In an extrinsic
semiconductor, impurities are added to the semiconductor that can
contribute either excess electrons or excess holes.
●In intrinsic semiconductors, for every electron excited into the
conduction band there is left behind a missing electron in one of
the covalent bonds
●Under the influence of an electric field, the position of this missing
electron within the crystalline lattice – A hole
●A hole is considered to have a charge +1.6exp-19 (opposite sign
of electron).
● Electrons and holes move in opposite directions.

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Doped Semiconductors

An extrinsic semiconductor can be formed from an

intrinsic semiconductor by adding impurity atoms to
the crystal in a process known as doping .

For Si appropriate dopants are elements from group III

and group V of the periodical table.

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Extrinsic Semiconductors

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 N-type Semiconductor
Antimony, arsenic or phosphorous
contributes free electrons, greatly increasing
the conductivity of the intrinsic
semiconductorArsenic has five valence
electrons, whereas Si has four. Thus when
an As atom bonds with four Si atoms, it has
one electron left unbonded.

The electrons are majority carriers. Fermi level is shifted upward in the ba

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 N-type Semiconductor
Elements that belong to group V of the periodic table such as As, P,
Sb have an extra electron in the valence band. When added as a
dopant to intrinsic Silicon, the dopant atom contributes an
additional electron to the crystal. Dopants that add electrons to the
crystal are known as donors and the semiconductor material is said
to be n-type.

Usually the concentration of donors ND is much larger than the

intrinsic carrier concentration. Therefore in n-type semiconductors:
ND >> ni
n ≈ ND
3002 Electronic Devices
Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 N-type Semiconductor

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 P-type Semiconductor
Dopants that create holes are known as
acceptors. This type of extrinsic
semiconductor is known as p-type as it
creates positive charge carriers.

Usually the concentration of acceptors NA is

much larger than the intrinsic carrier
concentration

Therefore in p-type semiconductors

NA >> ni
p ≈ NA

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Summary

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Carrier Statistics (Ionisation)

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Carrier Statistics

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 FERMI LEVEL
• "Fermi level" is the term used to describe the top of the collection of
electron energy levels at absolute zero temperature.
• This concept comes from Fermi-Dirac statistics. Electrons
are fermions and by the Pauli exclusion principle cannot exist in
identical energy states. So at absolute zero they pack into the lowest
available energy states and build up a "Fermi sea" of electron energy
states.
• The Fermi level is the surface of that sea at absolute zero where no
electrons will have enough energy to rise above the surface.

3002 Electronic Devices 23

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Carrier Statistics

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Carrier Statistics

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Carrier Statistics

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Example

Electron and hole conductivity effective masses

Si Ge GaAs
mn*/mo 0.26 0.12 0.068
mp*/mo 0.39 0.30 0.50
mo = 9.110-31 kg

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Example

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Example

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Supplementary

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Electron & Hole Concentration
The general equation for the conductivity of a
semiconductor, depends on n, the electron
concentration, and p, the hole concentration.
How do we determine these quantities?
Procedure involves multiplying density of states
gcb(E) by the probability of a state being
occupied f(E) and integrating over the entire
CB for n and over the entire VB for p.

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Energy Band Semiconductors

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Electron Concentration
Integrating this from the bottom (Ec) to the top (Ec
+ x) of the CB gives the electron concentration (n),
which is the number of electrons per unit volume in
the CB.

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Electron Concentration
Note that the Fermi function gives the probability of occupying
an available energy state,

Now that we have introduced he Fermi function, we should

define the Density of States, which is the number of
available energy states to determine how many electrons
would reach the conduction band. The density of states is
given by:

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Electron Concentration
Effective mass of electron, me*= 9.1exp-31 kg

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Hole Concentration
We can carry out a similar analysis for the
concentration of holes in the VB. Multiplying the
density of states gvb(E) in the VB with the
probability of occupancy by a hole [1 – f(E)].

Remember that the probability that an electron is

absent gives p, the hole concentration per unit
energy. Integrating this over the VB gives the hole
concentration.
3002 Electronic Devices
Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Hole Concentration

The hole concentration can therefore be expressed as:

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Intrinsic Carrier Concentration

Using the expressions for hole and electron concentrations,

we can therefore express the intrinsic carrier concentration as:

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam
 Intrinsic Carrier Concentration
An intrinsic semiconductor is a pure
semiconductor crystal in which the electron and
hole concentrations are equal. By pure we mean
virtually no impurities in the crystal. In an intrinsic
semiconductor, the Fermi-level is in the middle of
the bank gap, as previously shown.

3002 Electronic Devices

Week 1 – Lectures 3 & 4 Dr. Rami Ghannam