Introduction to Electronics & Semiconductors

Department of CS and SE Engr. Athar Baig

The University of Faisalabad, Lecturer
Lahore campus TUF, Lahore campus
Basic Electronics 1
 Introduction
 We are living in an age of Information Technology.
 Electronics is the very basic foundation of this computer
age.
 Different types of electronic equipment are used by us in
our every day life.
 Devices like TV, AC and Telephone etc.
 Electronics have made deep impact on our every day life
such as health care, automobiles, space travels, etc.

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 History of Electronics
 The invention of Vacuum tube brought in the age of
electronics.
 Many new and exciting applications were found for
devices.
 Edison, Marconi, Jack St. Clair Kilby (inventor of the
integrated circuit), Ambrose, De Forest , etc are associated
with electronics.
 After World war 2 , the transistors were introduced.
 There came the concept of IC, that stands for Integrated
Circuit.
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 History of Electronics
 If we take a moment to consider that the majority of all the
devices in use were invented decades ago and that design
techniques appearing in texts as far back as the 1930s are
still in use, we realize that most of what we see is
primarily a steady improvement in construction
techniques, general characteristics, and application
techniques rather than the development of new elements
and fundamentally new designs.
 Today IC is found in every modern electrical device like
computers, cars, TV, CD players, cell phones, etc.
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 History of Electronics
  
The miniaturization that has occurred in recent years
leaves us to wonder about its limits. Complete systems
now appear on wafers thousands of times smaller than the
single element of earlier networks.
 Today, the Intel® i7 extreme edition processor has 731
million transistors in a package that is only slightly larger
than a 1.67 sq. inches.
 In 1965, Dr. Gordon E. Moore presented a paper
predicting that the transistor count in a single IC chip
would double every two years.
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 All ICs used in Electronics are fabricated
with Semiconductors.
OR
All Electronics depends upon the
semiconductors.

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 Materials
 Before moving towards semiconductors let’s see how
many major types of materials exist.

Materials

Semi
Conductors Insulators
Conductors

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 Conductors
 Materials having only one valence electron (Electrons in
the outermost shell are called valence electrons)
 Conduct electricity very easily – low resistance.
 Valence electron is loosely bound with nucleus.
 Examples are Copper, Silver, Gold, Aluminum etc.
 Vastly used in Electrical Engineering (Generation,
Transmission and distribution).
 Used in household, industry and many other applications.
 Copper is very cheap among all.
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 Insulators
 Materials having eight valence electron.
 Cannot conduct electricity – high resistance.
 Valence electron is tightly bound with nucleus as it has
stable orbit (8 electrons).
 Examples are mica, glass, wood, rubber etc.
 Vastly used in Electrical Engineering (Transmission and
distribution side).
Do you still remember?
A stable atoms need 8 valence electrons it its outermost shell?

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 Semiconductor Materials (Ge, Si, & GaAs)
 The construction of every discrete (individual) solid-state
(hard crystal structure) electronic device or integrated
circuit begins with a semiconductor material of the highest
quality.
 Semiconductors are a special class of elements having a
conductivity between that of a good conductor and that of
an insulator.
 They have four valence electrons.
 Backbone of Electronics.

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 Semiconductor Materials (Ge, Si, AND GaAs)
Semiconductor Materials

Single Crystal Compound Crystal

constructed of two or more

repetitive crystal structure semiconductor materials of
(Si, Ge) different atomic structures (GaAs,
CdS, GaN, GaAsP)

The three semiconductors used most frequently in the construction of electronic devices are Ge, Si, and GaAs

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Semiconductor Materials (Ge, Si, AND GaAs)
 In the early few decades (1940s -1950s), Ge was used for
the fabrication of diodes and transistors because
 easy to find
 available in fairly large quantities
 easy to refine (to obtain very high levels of purity)
But
 suffered from low levels of reliability due primarily to its
sensitivity to changes in temperature
 High reverse saturation current

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 Semiconductor Materials (Ge, Si, AND GaAs)
 At the time, scientists were aware that another material, silicon, had
improved temperature sensitivities with low reverse saturation
current
But
 The refining process for manufacturing silicon of very high levels
of purity was still in the development stages.
 Finally, however, in 1954 the first silicon transistor was introduced,
and silicon quickly became the semiconductor material of choice.
 Not only is silicon less temperature sensitive, but it is one of the
most abundant materials on earth, removing any concerns about
availability.

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 Semiconductor Materials (Ge, Si, AND GaAs)
 As time moved on, however, the field of electronics became
increasingly sensitive to issues of speed and communication
systems were operating at higher levels of performance.
 A semiconductor material capable of meeting these new needs
had to be found. The result was the development of the first
GaAs transistor in the early 1970s.
GaAs Si
i. Speeds of operation up to five times that i. Speeds of operation is less than GaAs
of Si
ii. More expensive (Difficult to manufacture) ii. Cheaper to manufacture
iii. Little design support iii. Highly efficient design strategies

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Semiconductor Materials (Ge, Si, AND GaAs)

However, in time the demand for increased speed

resulted in more funding for GaAs research, to the
point that today it is often used as the base material
for new high-speed, very large scale integrated
(VLSI) circuit designs.

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Semiconductor Materials (Ge, Si, AND GaAs)
 This brief review of the history of semiconductor materials is
not meant to imply that GaAs will soon be the only material
appropriate for solid-state construction.
 Germanium devices are still being manufactured, although for
a limited range of applications. Even though it is a
temperature-sensitive semiconductor, it does have
characteristics that find application in a limited number of
areas. Given its availability and low manufacturing costs, it
will continue to find its place in product catalogs.

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 Semiconductor Materials (Ge, Si, AND GaAs)
Ge
Germanium is in limited production available at low cost and has more demand every day, with the
due to its temperature sensitivity and relatively low reverse saturation added features of low reverse
high reverse saturation current. It is currents, good temperature saturation currents, excellent
still commercially available but is characteristics, and excellent temperature sensitivities, and high
limited to some high-speed breakdown voltage levels. It also breakdown voltages.
applications (due to a relatively high benefits from decades of enormous More than 80% of its applications
mobility factor) and applications that attention to the design of large-scale are in optoelectronics with the
use its sensitivity to light and heat integrated circuits and processing development of light-emitting
such as photodetectors technology. diodes, solar cells, and other
and security systems. GaAs photodetector devices, but that will
Si Since the early 1990s the interest in probably change dramatically as its
Without question the GaAs has grown in leaps and manufacturing costs drop and its use
semiconductor used most bounds, and it will eventually take a in integrated circuit design continues
frequently for the full range of good share of the development from to grow; perhaps the semiconductor
silicon devices, especially in very material of the future.
electronic devices. It has the large scale integrated circuits. Its
advantage of being readily high-speed characteristics are in

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Semiconductor Materials (Ge, Si, AND GaAs)

As noted earlier, Si has the benefit of years of

development, and is the leading semiconductor
material for electronic components and ICs. In fact,
Si is still the fundamental building block for Intel’s
new line of processors.

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 Semiconductor Materials (Ge, Si, AND GaAs)
 Conductors have a positive temperature coefficient i.e. the
resistance increases with an increase in heat. This is because
the numbers of carriers in a conductor do not increase
significantly with temperature, but their vibration pattern about
a relatively fixed location makes it increasingly difficult for a
sustained flow of carriers through the material
While
 Semiconductor materials have a negative temperature
coefficient i.e. they exhibit an increased level of conductivity
with the application of heat.

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 Covalent bonding and intrinsic materials
 Silicon has 14 orbiting electrons, germanium has
32 electrons, gallium has 31 electrons, and arsenic
has 33 orbiting electrons.
 For germanium and silicon there are four
electrons in the outermost shell-tetravalent, which
are referred to as valence electrons. Gallium has
three valence electrons-trivalent and arsenic has
five valence electrons-pentavalent.
Valence: The potential (ionization potential)
required to remove any one of these electrons from the
atomic structure is significantly lower than that required
for any other electron in the structure. Atomic structure of (a) silicon; (b) germanium;
and (c) gallium and arsenic.

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 Question No.1
What is the net charge of the silicon atom if it loses one of
its valence electrons? If it gains an extra electron in the
valence orbit?

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 Covalent bonding and intrinsic materials

Covalent bonding of the GaAs crystal Covalent bonding of the silicon atom.
This bonding of atoms, strengthened by the sharing of electrons, is called covalent
bonding.
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 Covalent bonding and intrinsic materials
  
IntrinsicSemiconductor: A single-crystal semiconductor
material with no other types of atoms within the crystal (pure).
 The densities of electrons and holes are equal.
 At room temperature, a silicon crystal acts like an insulator
because it has only a few free electrons and holes produced by
thermal energy.
 The free electrons in a material due only to external causes are
referred to as intrinsic carriers.
 Relative mobility () of the free carriers in the material, that is,
the ability of the free carriers to move throughout the material.

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 Covalent bonding and intrinsic materials

 Free carriers in GaAs have more than five times the mobility of free carriers
in Si - a factor that results in response times using GaAs electronic devices.
 Free carriers in Ge > twice the mobility of electrons in Si - continued use of
Ge in high-speed radio frequency applications.

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 Hole and Electrons
 When the ambient temperature is above absolute zero(-273°C),
the heat energy in this air causes the atoms in a silicon crystal
to vibrate. The higher the ambient temperature, the stronger the
mechanical vibrations become.
 In a silicon crystal, the vibrations of the atoms can
occasionally dislodge an electron from the valence orbit. When
this happens, the released electron gains enough energy to go
into a larger orbit.
 The departure of the electron creates a vacancy in the valence
orbit called a hole.
 At room temperature, thermal energy produces only a few holes and free electrons. To
increase the number of holes and free electrons, it is necessary to dope the crystal.
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 Recombination and Lifetime
 In a pure silicon crystal, thermal (heat) energy creates an
equal number of free electrons and holes. The free
electrons move randomly throughout the crystal.
Occasionally, a free electron will approach a hole, feel its
attraction, and fall into it. Recombination is the merging
of a free electron and a hole.
 The amount of time between the creation and
disappearance of a free electron is called the lifetime. It
varies from a few nanoseconds to several microseconds,
depending on how perfect the crystal is and other factors.

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 Question No.2
If a pure silicon crystal has 1 million free electrons inside
it, how many holes does it have? What happens to the
number of free electrons and holes if the ambient
temperature (temperature of the surrounding air)
increases?

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 Doping a Semiconductor
 One way to increase conductivity of a semiconductor is by
doping. This means adding impurity atoms to an intrinsic
crystal to alter its electrical conductivity.
 A doped semiconductor is called an extrinsic semiconductor.
 Increasing the Free Electron (N-type)
 Increasing the Number of Holes (P-type)
 The more impurity that is added, the greater the conductivity.
In this way, a semiconductor may be lightly or heavily doped.
A lightly doped semiconductor has a high resistance, whereas a
heavily doped semiconductor has a low resistance.

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 Doping a Semiconductor
P-type
i. P stands for Positive.
ii. To increase the number of holes,
trivalent (3 valence electron) impurity is
added to pure Si.
iii. Examples of trivalent atoms include
Boron (5), Aluminum (13), and Gallium
(31).
iv. Accepter impurity elements: Take
electrons to form P-type semiconductors.
v. Holes are majority carriers while
electrons are minority carriers.
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N-Type
i. N stands for Negative.
ii. To increase the number of free electrons,
pentavalent (5 valence electron)
impurity is added to pure Si.
iii. Examples of pentavalent atoms include
arsenic (33), antimony (51), and
phosphorus (15).
iv. Donor impurity elements: Give electrons
to form N-type semiconductors
v. Electrons are majority carriers while
holes are minority carriers
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 Question No.3
A doped semiconductor has 10 billion silicon atoms and
15 million pentavalent atoms. If the ambient temperature
is 25°C, how many free electrons and holes are there
inside the semiconductor?

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 Energy gap
  
Now, in order to break the covalent bond, a valence electron
must gain enough energy to become free electrons.
 The minimum energy required is known as the bandgap
energy,
 The farther an electron is from the nucleus, the higher is the
energy state, and any electron that has left its parent atom has
a higher energy state than any electron in the atomic structure.

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 Energy Levels

Discrete levels in isolated atomic

structures

Conduction and valence bands of an insulator,

a semiconductor, and a conductor.

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 Energy gap
  
Now, in order to break the covalent bond, a valence electron
must gain enough energy to become free electrons.
 The minimum energy required is known as the bandgap
energy,
 The farther an electron is from the nucleus, the higher is the
energy state, and any electron that has left its parent atom has
a higher energy state than any electron in the atomic structure.

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 Thank You

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