Home Assignment - IV (EEL732)

Adersh Miglani
Adersh.Miglani@gmail.com

13-Aug-2013

Assignment: Suppose we could make a wire of n-type silicon doped at 1015 cm3 . What would be the diameter of a 10 cm long piece of Si wire to have same resistance as #24 copper wire of same length? Solution: 1) Resistance of a n-type semiconductor of length L and cross-section area A is given by the following expression R= L A (1)

6) Radius of silicon wire should be 5498.8 = 41.84 cm 7) The diameter of a 10 cm long piece of Si wire is r= d = 2r = 83.68 cm Answer (7)

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where is resistivity 2) The expression for the resistivity of a semiconductor is = 1 e(n n + p p) (2)

where e is electron charge in Coulomb, n is electron mobility, p is hole mobility, n is electron concentration and p is hole concentration. 3) At room temperature T = 300 K, the intrinsic concentration is ni = 1.45 1010 cm3 . Assume all donors are ionized. Then, concentration of electrons in conduction band is n Nd = 1015 cm3 . In this case, the concentration of holes in valence band is computed by the law of mass action, p= Since, n n2 1.452 1020 i = = 2.1 105 n 1015 p, = 1 1 e(n n + p p) e(n n) (3)

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4) Typical electron mobility for silicon at room temperature is n = 1350 cm2 /V-s. The resistivity of given n-type silicon is 1 = 4.63 -cm = 19 1.6 10 (1350 1015 ) 5) The resistance1 of #24 copper wire is 0.0842 /m at 20 C. So, the resistance of a 10 cm long #24 copper wire is, R = 0.0842 0.10 = 0.00842 The cross-sectional area of semiconductor is L 10 A = = 4.63 = 5498.8 cm2 R 0.00842
1 Source:

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