aculty of Automatic Control and Computer Engineerin

Semiconductors
A presentation by:

lexandru-Mihai Petrisor

Vlad Stoleriu

1. Introduction
In the last few decades, electronics has become more and
more central to our lives .There is no doubt that semiconductors
changed the world beyond anything that could have been imagined
before them. Although people have probably always needed to
communicate and process data, it is thanks to the semiconductors
that these two important tasks have become easy and take up
infinitely less time than at the time of vacuum tubes.
As a result, today our cell phones
have more power than the
supercomputers of yesteryear. Our cars
contain dozens of microprocessors. We
shop online. We read books on our
Kindles or iPads. We play videogames on
consoles that are more powerful than the
flight simulators of twenty years ago.

2. Early History of Semiconductors

According to G. Busch the term
semiconducting was used for the first time by
Alessandro Volta in 1782. The first documented
observation of a semiconductor effect is that of
Michael Faraday (1833), who noticed that the
resistance of silver sulfide decreased with
temperature, which was different than the
dependence observed in metals .
For some years to come the history of
semiconductors focused around two important
properties, rectification of metal-semiconductor
junction and sensitivity of semiconductors to light.

3.What is a semiconductor?
A semiconductor is a material which
has electrical conductivity between that of a
conductor such as copper and an insulator
such as glass.
The conductivity of a semiconductor
increases with increasing temperature,
behaviour opposite to that of a metal.
Semiconductors can display a range
of useful properties such as passing current
more easily in one direction than the other.
Because the conductive properties of
a semiconductor can be modified by controlled
addition of impurities or by the application of
electrical fields or light, semiconductors are
very useful devices for amplification of signals,
switching, and energy conversion.

4.Importance of semiconductors
Due to their role in the fabrication of
electronic devices, semiconductors are an important
part of our lives. Imagine life without electronic
devices. There would be no radios, no TV's, no
computers, no video games, and poor medical
diagnostic equipment.
Although many electronic
devices could be made using vacuum
tube technology, the developments in
semiconductor technology during the
past 50 years have made electronic
devices smaller, faster, and more reliable.
Think for a minute of all the encounters
you have with electronic devices.
How many of the following have
you seen or used in the last twenty-four
hours? Each has important components

4.Importance of semiconductors
Engineering importance of
semiconductors results from the fact
that they can be conductors as well as
insulators.
Semiconductors are especially
important because varying conditions
like temperature and impurity content
can easily alter their conductivity.
The combination of different semiconductor
types together generates devices with special
electrical properties, which allow control of
electrical signals. Semiconductors are employed
in the manufacture of electronic devices and
integrated circuits.

5.Types of semiconductors
Semiconductors are mainly classified into two categories:
Intrinsic and Extrinsic. An intrinsic semiconductor material is
chemically very pure and possesses poor conductivity. Where as an
extrinsic semiconductor is an improved intrinsic semiconductor with a
small amount of impurities added by a process, known as doping,
which alters the electrical properties of the semiconductor and
improves its conductivity.
Introducing impurities into the
semiconductor materials (doping
process) can control their
conductivity. Doping process
produces two groups of
semiconductors: the negative
charge conductor (n-type) and the
positive charge conductor (p-

6.How do semiconductors work

Most of the semiconductor devices and
chips are created with silicon. Carbon, silicon
and germanium have a unique property in their
electron structure , each has four electrons in
its outer orbital.
The four electrons form perfect covalent
bonds with four neighboring atoms, creating a
lattice.
In doping, you mix a small amount of an
impurity into the silicon crystal. A minute
amount of either N-type or P-type doping turns
a silicon crystal from a good insulator into a
viable (but not great) conductor , hence the
name "semiconductor."

6.How do semiconductors work

Here is a short movie about how semiconductors work:

7.Properties of semiconductors
Semiconductors have many useful properties that insulators and
conductors do not possess. These properties are based on the fact that an
electron can jump from the valence band to the conduction band and vice
versa.
Temperature can give this little extra
energy to an electron and make it jump to
the conduction band thus creating a hole in
the valence band.
Light can also give this energy boost
and create what we call an electron-hole
pair: a free electron and a free hole: this
phenomenon is called absorption.
Photoconductivity is the increase of current
in a semiconductor due to the absorption of
photons.
So the semiconductors, really are the
key to electronics today and the ways in
which their role affects our lives.

8.References

http://www.howstuffworks.com/semiconductors.html
http://enpub.fulton.asu.edu/widebandgap/NewPages/SCbasics.html
http://matse1.matse.illinois.edu/sc/ware.html
http://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/1574-semiconductors-brief-history.ht
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