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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.
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.
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 .
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.