Crystal Properties and growth-

GaN/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 blend 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 - Chozchralski 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 hetero-epitaxy.

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 blend 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 107 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.

= 0

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:

()
= 0 ()

The solution to this equation is an exponent given by:

() = 0

Where (0 )-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

1
=
(0 + 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 experiment-

In 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.

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