Semiconductor Fundamentals

Semiconductor Fundamentals: Semiconductor Materials: Conductors, Semiconductors & Insulators, Atomic & Crystal Structure of Semiconductors, Energy Bands, Bandgap & Band Diagrams, Intrinsic & Extrinsic Semiconductors: Doping and Carrier Concentration.

• Semiconductor Materials: Conductors, Semiconductors & Insulators — What a semiconductor is and why it changed the world. Compare conductors, semiconductors and insulators by resistivity and bandgap; meet elemental (Si, Ge) and compound semiconductors (III-V such as GaAs, InP, GaN; II-VI such as CdTe, ZnSe; IV-IV SiC), wide-bandgap materials, direct vs indirect bandgaps and why that decides whether a material can emit light, and the families of semiconductor devices — integrated circuits, discrete, power, optoelectronic, RF and sensor devices — across computing, automotive, power, communication, medical, aerospace and renewable energy. Python compares resistivities, bandgaps and optical cut-off wavelengths.
• Atomic & Crystal Structure of Semiconductors — From atoms to wafers. Learn atomic structure (protons, neutrons, electrons, atomic number, shells and valence electrons), covalent bonding in group-IV semiconductors, crystalline vs polycrystalline vs amorphous solids, lattice, unit cell and basis, the diamond-cubic (Si, Ge) and zinc-blende (GaAs) and wurtzite (GaN) structures, crystal planes and directions with Miller indices, wafer orientations (100)/(111), and crystal defects — vacancies, interstitials, substitutional impurities, dislocations, stacking faults and grain boundaries — and their effect on devices. Python computes silicon's atom density, mass density, bond length, plane densities and interplanar spacings.
• Energy Bands, Bandgap & Band Diagrams — Why solids have bands and what the gap means. Learn how discrete atomic levels split into bands when atoms come together, the valence band, conduction band and forbidden gap, electrons and holes as carriers, the band pictures of metals, semiconductors and insulators, the Fermi level, the E–k diagram with direct and indirect gaps, effective mass, temperature dependence of the gap (Varshni), band bending near surfaces and junctions, and material data for Si, Ge, GaAs, GaN, SiC and InP — with Python computing E_g(T) and photon cut-off wavelengths.
• Intrinsic & Extrinsic Semiconductors: Doping and Carrier Concentration — Controlling carriers with impurities. Learn intrinsic (pure) semiconductors, thermal generation of electron–hole pairs, intrinsic carrier concentration n_i and its strong temperature dependence, the mass-action law np = n_i², donors (P, As, Sb) and acceptors (B), N-type and P-type material, majority and minority carriers, donor/acceptor ionisation energies, freeze-out, extrinsic and intrinsic temperature regions, compensation doping, heavy doping and degeneracy — with Python solving charge neutrality with incomplete ionisation from 50 K to 700 K.