Semiconductor technology

The most important and perhaps most exciting electrical devices used today
are built from semiconductive materials. Electronic devices, such as diodes,
transistors, thyristors,thermistors, photovoltaic cells,phototransistors,
photoresistors, lasers, and integrated circuits, are all made from
semiconductive materials, or semiconductors.

What is a semiconductor ?
Materials are classified by their ability to conduct electricity. Substances
that easily pass an electric current, such as silver and copper, are
referred to as conductors.Materials that have a difficult time passing
an electric current, such as rubber, glass,and Teflon, are called
insulators. There is a third category of material whose conductivity
lies between those of conductors and insulators. This third category
of material is referred to as a semiconductor.

A semiconductor has a kind of neutral conductivity when taken as a

group. Technically speaking, semiconductors are defined as those
materials that have a conductivity in the range between 107 and
103 mho/cm (see Fig. 1). Some semiconductors are pure-elemental
structures (e.g., silicon, germanium), others are alloys (e.g.,
nichrome, brass), and still others
are liquids.

Silicon
Silicon is the most important semiconductor used in building
electrical devices.Other materials such as germanium and
selenium are sometimes used, too, but they are less popular. In
pure form, silicon has a unique atomic structure with very
important properties useful in making electrical devices.

Silicon is ranked second in the order of elements appearing in the

earths crust, an average of 27 percent occurring in igneous rocks. It
is estimated that a cubic mile of seawater contains about 15,000 tons
of silicon. It is extremely rare to find silicon in its pure crystalline
form in nature, and before it can be used in making electronic
devices, it must be separated from its binding elements. After
individualschemists, material scientists, etc.perform the
purification process, the silicon is melted and spun into a large seed
crystal. This long crystal can then be cut up into slices or wafers that
semiconductor-device designers use in making electrical contraptions .

For the semiconductor-device designer, a silicon wafer alone does not

prove very useful. A designer would not use the silicon wafer in its
pure form to build a device;it just does not have quite the right
properties needed to be useful. A semiconductor device designer is
looking for a material that can be made to alter its conductive
state,acting as a conductor at one moment and as an insulator at
another moment. For the material to change states, it must be able
to respond to some external force applied at will, such as an
externally applied voltage. A silicon wafer alone is not going to do the
trick. In fact, a pure silicon wafer acts more as an insulator than a
conductor, and it does not have the ability to change conductive
states when an external force is applied.Every designer today knows
today that a silicon wafer can be transformed and combined with
other transformed silicon wafers to make devices that have the ability
to alter their conductive states when an external force is applied. The
transforming process is referred to as doping.

Doping
Doping refers to the process of spicing up or adding ingredients
to a silicon wafer in such a way that it becomes useful to the
semiconductor-device designer.Many ingredients can be added in
the doping process, such as antimony, arsenic,aluminum, and
gallium. These ingredients provide specialized characteristics such
as frequency response to applied voltages, strength, and thermal
integrity,to name a few. By far, however, the two most important
ingredients that are of fundamental importance to the
semiconductor-device designer are boron and phosphorus .

When a silicon wafer is doped with either boron or

phosphorus, its electrical conductivity is altered
dramatically. Normally, a pure silicon wafer contains no
free electrons; all four of its valence electrons are locked
up in covalent bonds with neighboring silicon atoms (see
Fig.). Without any free electrons, an applied voltage will
have little effect on producing an electron flow through
the wafer.

A silicon wafer in pure form doesnt contain any free charge

carriers; all the electrons are locked up into covalent bonds
between neighboring atoms.

However, if phosphorus is added to the silicon wafer, something

very interesting occurs. Unlike silicon, phosphorus has five valance
electrons instead of four. Four of its valance electrons will form
covalent bonds with the valance electrons of four neighboring
silicon atoms (see Fig.). However, the fifth valance electron will
not have a home (binding site) and will be loosely floating about
the atoms. If a voltage is applied across the silicon-phosphorus
mixture, the unbound electron will migrate through the doped
silicon toward the positive voltage end. By supplying more
phosphorus to the mixture, a larger flow of electrons will result.
Silicon that is doped with phosphorus is referred to as n-type
silicon, or negative-charge-carrier-type silicon.

A phosphorus atom added to a silicon wafer provides an extra unbound

electron that aids in conduction. Silicon doped with phosphorus is called ntype silicon.

Now, if you take pure silicon and add some boron, you will see a different
kind conduction effect. Boron, unlike silicon or phosphorus, contains only
three valance electrons. When it is mixed with silicon, all three of its
valance electrons will bind with neighboring silicon atoms see Figure.
However, there will be a vacant spotcalled a holewithin the covalent
bond between one boron and one silicon atom. If a
voltage is applied across the doped wafer, the hole will move toward the
negative voltage end, while a neighboring electron will fill in its place. Holes
are considered positive charge carriers even though they do not contain a
physical charge per se.Instead, it only appears as if a hole has a positive
charge because of the charge imbalance between the protons within the
nucleus of the silicon atom that receives the hole and the electrons in the
outer orbital. The net charge on a particular silicon atom with a hole will
appear to be positive by an amount of charge equivalent to one proton (or
a negative electron). Silicon that is doped with boron is referred to as ptype silicon,or positive-charge-carrier-type silicon.
When boron is added
to silicon, a hole is
formed.This hole acts
like a positive charge
(see text) that aids in
conduction. Silicon
doped with boron is
called p-type silicon.

Applications of silicon
You may be asking yourself, Why are these two new
types of silicon (n-type and p-type) so useful and
interesting? What good are they for semiconductordevice designers? Why is there such a fuss over
them? These doped silicon crystals are now
conductors, big deal, right? Yes, we now have two
new conductors, but the two new conductors have
two unique ways of passing an electric currentone
does it with holes, the other with electrons. This is
very important.

The manners in which n-type and p-type silicon conduct electricity (electron
flow and hole flow) are very important in designing electronic devices such
as diodes,transistors, and solar cells. Some clever people figured out ways to
arrange slabs,chucks, strings, etc. made of n-type and p-type silicon in such
a way that when an external voltage or current is applied to these structures,
unique and very useful features result. These unique features are made
possible by the interplay between hole flow and electron flow between the ntype and p-type semiconductors. With these new n-type/p-type contraptions,
designers began building one-way gates for current flow, opening and closing
channels for current flow controlled by an external electrical voltage and/or
current. Folks figured out that when an n-type and a p-type semiconductor
were placed together and a particular voltage was applied across the slabs,
light, or photons, could be produced as the electrons jumped across the
junction between the interface. It was noticed that this process could work
backward as well.That is, when light was exposed at the np junction,
electrons were made to flow, thus resulting in an electric current. Anumber
of clever contraptions have been built using n-type and p-type semiconductor
combinations. The following chapters describe some of the major devices
people came up with.

Diodes
Adiode is a two-lead semiconductor device that acts as a
one-way gate to electric current flow. When a diodes anode
lead is made more positive in voltage than its cathode lead
a condition referred to as forward biasingcurrent is
permitted to flow through the device. However, if the
polarities are reversed (the anode is made more negative in
voltage than the cathode)a condition referred to as
reversed biasingthe diode acts to block current flow.

Diodes are used most commonly in circuits that convert ac voltages and
current into dc voltages and currents (e.g., ac/dc power supply). Diodes are
also used in voltage-multiplier circuits, voltage-shifting circuits, voltagelimiting circuits, and voltage-regulator circuits.

How pn-junction diodes work

Apn-junction diode (rectifier diode) is formed by sandwiching together ntype and p-type silicon. In practice, manufacturers grow an n-type silicon
crystal and then abruptly change it to a p-type crystal. Then either a glass
or plastic coating is placed around the joined crystals. The n side is the
cathode end, and the p side is the anode end.
The trick to making a one-way gate from these combined pieces of silicon is
getting the charge carriers in both the n-type and p-type silicon to interact in
such a way that when a voltage is applied across the device, current will flow
in only one direction.Both n-type and p-type silicon conducts electric current;
one does it with electrons(n-type), and the other does it with holes (p-type).
Now the important feature to note here, which makes a diode work (act as a
one-way gate), is the manner in which the two types of charge carriers
interact with each other and how they interact with an applied electrical field
supplied by an external voltage across its leads. Below is an explanation
describing how the charge carriers interact with each other and with the
electrical field to create an electrically controlled one-way gate.

When a diode is connected to a battery,

as shown here, electrons from the n
side and holes from the p side are
forced toward the center (pn interface)
by the electrical field supplied by the
battery. The electrons and holes
combine, and current passes through
the diode.When a diode is arranged in
this way, it is said to be forward biased.

When a diode is connected to a battery, as

shown here, holes in the n side are forced
to the left, while electrons in the p side are
forced to the right. This results in an empty
zone around the pn junction that is free of
charge carriers, better known as the
depletion region.This depletion region has
an insulative quality that prevents current
from flowing through the diode. When a
diode is arranged in this way, it is said to
be reverse-biased.