Crystal Properties and growthGaN/P/As in LEDs

ZnS in fluorescent screens

A family of equivalent planes is represented in {} brackets. A negative intercept in
the miller indices is represented using a bar over the top of the index.
Diamond and Zinc blende have same intertwined FCC structures except diamond
lattice has identical atoms at all the sites and zinc blend has two different atomic
species at alternating FCC sites.
Silicon - Czochralski method for single crystal growth
Involves pulling of single crystal from a molten EGS (electronic Grade Silicon).
Rotations even out the temperature variations.
GaAs Gallium Arsenide needs modification to CZ process as it needs to avoid
evaporation of volatile As. This is done by adding a layer of dense, viscous B2O3 on
top of the melted mass which prevents evaporation of As. This is known as Liquid
Encapsulation CZ process (LEC).
Silicon Large crystals, more estate, more chips/wafer. Considerable amount of
research has been done in growing large single crystal silicon wafers. Most ingots
are grown along <100> direction as the interface state density is minimum along
this direction compared to <111>.
IN CZ method kd (distribution coefficient) = Cs/CL (conc in solid phase/ conc. In
liquid phase) .This equation controls the doping conc. usually the kd values depends
on material, temperature and some other factors and is less than 1. Thus as the
solid grows the effective conc in liquid phase silicon. Temperature control
mechanisms and addition of undoped silicon are done to obtain fairly uniformly
doped crystal.
Another method to grow single crystal doped semiconductor is epitaxy.
Two imp characteristics of epitaxy are: Same crystal structure and orientation as
that of substrate crystal.
Liquid phase, vapor phase, molecular beam epitaxy.
Hetero-epitaxy
Two different materials with almost same lattice constants can be used in heteroepitaxy.

Example: GaAs and AlAs have almost similar lattice constants 5.65 A. Thus this pair
can be used to grow ternary compound semiconductor epitaxial layers on GaAs
substrates.
Pseudomorphic crystal Strained thin layer of semiconductor with different lattice
constant than that of underlying substrate until it reaches critical thickness.
Vapor phase epitaxy Similar to CVD where the gas phase reaction occurs between
the precursor gases and the semiconductor is deposited onto the substrate and is
reformed into single crystal due to sufficiently high temperature.
The reaction has to occur at the surface of substrate so as to form a perfectly singe
crystal structure.

Chapter 2 Schrodinger wave equation and quantum mechanics

A particle in a region is defined by a wave function (x,y,z,t). The function and its
space derivative are continuous, finite and single valued.
Wave functions that are not normalizable, a symmetric integration limit has to be
used as a mathematical trick to avoid undefined form.
For finite potential problem such as the case of tunneling since the wave function is
not zero at the boundaries, we have to equate the wave function and its space
derivative on both sides of the boundary as it is continuous across the boundary.
Tunneling is a typical example of quantum mechanical phenomenon which cannot
be explained by classical mechanics.
SP3 hybridized linearly combined atomic orbitals in the outer shell of Si atoms
assumes tetragonal arrangement of orbitals in 3D space. These directed chemical
bonds are responsible for the diamond or zinc blende lattice in most semiconductors
as they have similar outer configurations.

Chapter 3
Conductivity effective mass is used in charge transport problems while density of
states effective mass is used in calculating number of carriers in bands.
Conductivity effective mass is harmonic mean of band curvature effective masses
while density of states effective mass is geometric mean of the band curvature
masses.
Hot carrier effect At higher values of electric field the drift velocity shows sublinear
dependence on the field values which is called hot carrier effect as the drift velocity

is comparable to thermal velocity. Typical value of mean thermal velocity is 10 7

cm/s.
Hall Effect A voltage is generated across the width of the semiconductor in
response to force generated by mutually perpendicular external magnetic and
electric fields. This voltage creates a field which balances the aforementioned force.
The sign of the generated voltage is direct indicator of type of majority carriers in
the sample.
No discontinuity or gradient can arise in equilibrium fermi level

Chapter 4 Excess carriers in semiconductors

An optically excited electron may have initially more energy than typical thermal
equilibrium energy of conduction band electrons. But it loses the energy, in a series
of scattering events, to the lattice until it reaches the thermal equilibrium energy.
Unless the sample is very heavily doped almost all the electrons are near the
conduction band edge. Law of mass action is not valid for excess carrier
concentration.
l

I t =I 0 e

Above equation gives the intensity of transmitted light through the sample of
thickness l. (alpha) depends on the material.
General property of light emission is called luminescence.
Photon assisted - Photoluminescence
High energy electron assisted Cathodoluminescence
Electrical current assisted Electroluminescence
Luminescence can be broadly divided into fluorescence (Short lifetime 10 -8s) and
phosphorescence (longer lifetime few seconds to couple of minutes) based on how
much linger the photon emission continues from the material after the excitation
source has been cut off.
The excess electron/hole concentration and recombination rate is governed by the
difference between thermal generation rate and recombination rate:

dn(t )
= p 0 n(t )
dt
The solution to this equation is an exponent given by:

 p0 t

n(t)= n e

Where (

p0 )-1 is called minority carrier lifetime.

This formulation is valid a low level injection i.e. excess carrier

concentration is small as compared to equilibrium concentration.
A more general expression for carrier lifetime

n=

1
(n 0+ p 0)

Indirect Recombination:
Group IV elements have a very low probability of direct electron-hole recombination.
Some band gap light is given off by these materials but the intensity of radiation is
very weak. Majority of recombination occurs via recombination levels in the band
gap which are essentially defect or impurity energy levels.
A defect level is either called a recombination center or a trapping center based on
the most probable event after the trapping of first type of carrier. In general a level
deep in the band gap (near the center) is more likely to hold on to the trapped
carrier than a level near one of the band edges.
By general calculations it can be shown that quasi fermi level for majority carriers
varies slightly while that of minority carriers sees a prominent shift from equilibrium
level after the excess carrier generation.
Minority carriers can contribute significantly to the device current through diffusion.
Although minority carrier concentration is orders of magnitude smaller than majority
carriers, the gradient may be significant which can provide as large current as that
of majority carrier drift current.
The relation between diffusion coefficient and mobility is given by Einstein relation
Electron and hole continuity equations give a rate of hole buildup in a section x.
When the current is strictly by diffusion we can represent the entire device current
by diffusion current equations. This is helpful in solving transient diffusion problems
with recombination.
Haynes-Shockley experimentIn this experiment the mobility is measured by monitoring the drift time for the
pulse of minority carriers as it moves down a semiconductor bar created by a short
pulse of light. In contrast to Hall Effect measurement which is used to calculate
majority carrier mobility by resistive measurements, Haynes-Shockley experiment is
used to calculate minority carrier mobility.

Chapter 5 Junctions
For every micron of SiO2 grown by thermal oxidation, 0.44 micron of silicon is
consumed. One of the most important reasons why todays digital revolution exists
is partly because silicon has a highly useful and stable native oxide with excellent
interfacial properties.
Product of Diffusion constant and process time is called thermal budget. Diffusion
length is square root of thermal budget.
Contact potential cannot be measured with a voltmeter across a PN junction as new
potentials are formed at each probe cancelling built in potential. The separation of
bands on either side of the junction is just enough to make the fermi level constant
throughout the device.
At equilibrium the drift and diffusion components of individual carriers just balance
each other. We can use this statement to find the contact potential expression as a
function of doping concentrations on either side of the junction.
The assumption of charge neutrality outside space charge region and carrier
depletion within it is called depletion approximation.
Zener Breakdown For heavily doped junction the depletion width is very small and with sufficient
reverse bias the large no of free electrons from N side are opposite to large number
of empty states in P side. In this case the reverse current flows due to quantum
mechanical tunneling. This is called Zener effect. Zener effect is particularly
observed at lower bias voltages i.e. few volts. Beyond this Avalanche mechanism
dominates the breakdown process. Zener breakdown is essentially field ionization of
host atoms at the junction.
Avalanche Breakdown Avalanche breakdown is an effect of impact ionization which gets multiplied as more
and more carriers are generated.

Chapter 6 - Field Effect Transistors

MOSCAP
In MOSCAP a modified metal work function is used at metal-oxide interface for
convenience which is the energy difference between metal fermi level and
conduction band of oxide. Following phenomena are described considering a P-type
semiconductor

Accumulation: (Accumulation refers to the aggregation of majority carriers at the

interface)
Applying a negative at the metal side lower the electrostatic potential of the metal
side equivalently dumping a negative charge. In response the semiconductor side
fermi levels adjust to accommodate equal positive charge at the semiconductor
oxide interface. Qualitatively, the semiconductor becomes more P-type at the
interface than in the bulk.
Depletion:
A slight positive charge at the metal electrode causes equal amount of negative
charge at the semi-oxide interface just enough to deplete the carriers at the
interface.
Inversion:
Strong positive charge bends the Ei so much that it bends below Ef which indicates
large electron concentration at the surface. This layer is formed not by doping but
by inversion of originally P-type semiconductor and is separated from underlying pbulk by depletion layer. This phenomenon is the key to operation of MOS transistor.
Capacitance measurement
Gate-Substrate capacitance measurement is the only way to calculate imp device
parameters such as substrate impurity concentration, flat band voltage.
Methods:
1. Step voltage quasi-static C-V (QSCV)
2. Traditional Oscillator based measurement techniques
In step voltage measurement technique a known step voltage is applied across the
device and corresponding induced current is measured by SMU which can be
integrated to get the total charge dumped due to step voltage.

C=

Q
V gives the capacitance. Note that the step voltage should be less than or

equal to the sweep step.

This method, however, fails when leakage current exceeds the current
measurement range. In this case conventional extreme high frequency
measurements have to be made using capacitance meter technique.