Adama Science and Technology University – ASTU

School of Mechanical, Chemical and Materials Engineering

Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Materials Laboratory II (MScE 3202)

(Semiconductor Lab)
By: Yodit Birhanu (MSc.)
ASTU, MSE
 Electrical and optical properties of
semiconductor based devices

Objective

• Classification of Materials
• Semiconductor
• Impurity doping

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 Classification of materials

• Solid materials can be classified into three in terms of their electric

conductivity.

1. Conductor,
2. Semiconductor and
3. Insulators.
• A conductor is an object or type of materials which permits the flow of
electric charges in one or more directions.

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• Most of metals including copper, gold, silver, aluminum, are conductors due
to their abundant freely movable electrons.

• Electrolytes having movable cationic ions or anionic ions are also

conductors.

• In contrast, insulator is a materials whose internal electric charges do not

flow freely, and therefore very hard to conduct an electric current.

• Silicon dioxide, SiO2, is a representative of insulator.

• Semiconductors are a group of materials having electrical conductivities

intermediate between conductors and insulators.

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Figure.1 Electric conductivity of various materials and its
classification 5
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Semiconductors

• Semiconductor materials are found in column Ⅳ and neighboring

columns of the periodic table.
• The column Ⅳ semiconductors, silicon and germanium are called
elemental semiconductors because they are composed of single species
of atoms.
• In addition, compounds of column Ⅲ and column Ⅴ atoms, as well as
certain combinations from Ⅱ and Ⅵ, and from Ⅳ, make up the
compound semiconductors, GaN, GaP, GaAs, InAs, SiGe, and so on.

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Impurity doping
• One of the most important features of semiconductors is that their
electrical conductivity can be varied over orders of magnitude by
changes in temperature, optical excitation, and impurity doping.

• Doping refers to the process of introducing impurity atoms into a

semiconductor wafer.

• According to the doping, semiconductors can be classified into two:

intrinsic semiconductor and extrinsic semiconductor.

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✓An intrinsic semiconductor is a pure semiconductor without any
significant dopant species present.

✓An extrinsic semiconductor is a semiconductor that has been doped.

✓Also extrinsic semiconductors with a larger electron concentration

than hole concentration are known as n-type semiconductors and
extrinsic semiconductors as opposed to n-type semiconductors are
called as p-type semiconductors.

✓This variability of electrical properties makes the semiconductor

materials natural choices for electronic device investigations.

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➢Generally group 5 elements; nitrogen and phosphorus are used as n-type
dopants for Si.

➢Group 5 elements have 5 valence electrons and they provide one nearly free
electron after bonding with Si having only 4 valence electrons (only small
energy is enough to make them free).

➢N-type dopants providing electrons are also called donor.

➢Meanwhile, group 3 element, boron, is widely used as a p-type dopant for Si.

➢Missing the fourth valence electron creates broken bonds in the silicon lattice
which are almost free to move called holes.

➢P-type dopants which provide holes are called acceptor. (Figure. 2)

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Figure. 2 Doping in silicon

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 Week Two
• Objective
Electron density of n-type Si as a function of temperature
✓ freeze-out,
✓ extrinsic, and
✓ intrinsic region
Semiconductor based devices:
✓ pn diodes and
✓ Schottky diodes

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❖We are going to discuss the change of electron density in n-type doped Si according to
temperature.

❖There are two types of electron. One comes from Si itself which is called intrinsic carrier
(electron), and the other comes from the donor. i.e nitrogen and phosphorus …..

❖Intrinsic carrier density, ni, strongly depends on temperature.

❖As temperature increases, it exponentially increases (as dashed line in the figure).

❖Therefore, conductivity of semiconductor increases due to much more carriers at higher

temperature which is contrast to metals which show decreasing conductivity due to thermal
motion of nuclei obstructing electron flow.

❖The wide variety of electronic properties of the semiconductors by impurity doping

provides the device engineer with great flexibility in the design of electronic functions:
rectifiers, transistors, integrated circuits.
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• When the semiconductor is doped, electron
concentration versus temperature showing the
three regions: freeze-out, extrinsic, and intrinsic
region.

• In freeze-out region, donors become more ionized

and provide more electrons as temperature
increases.

• In extrinsic region, donors are completely ionized.

Despite of increasing intrinsic carrier density,
electron density is almost constant because
intrinsic carrier density is still much lower than the
dopant concentration in this range.

• However, at the much elevated temperature, Figure. 3 Electron density of n-type Si as a function
intrinsic carrier density becomes dominant. of temperature
Therefore, it is called intrinsic region.
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 Semiconductor based devices: pn diodes and Schottky diodes

What is Diode?

• A diode is a type of two-terminal electronic

component with nonlinear resistance and
conductance.

• The most common function of a diode is to

allow an electric current to pass in one
direction (forward direction), while
blocking current in the opposite direction
(reverse direction).

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The operation of diodes is often described by a current-voltage characteristic in Figure 4
which shows the relationship between the current and voltage associated with the different
terminals of the device.

• The axes of the graph show both

positive and negative values and so
intersect at the center.

• The intersection has a value of zero

for both current (the Y axis) and
voltage (the X axis).

• The axes +I and +V (top right)

show the current rising steeply after
an initial zero current area.

• This is the forward conduction of

the diode when the anode is positive
and cathode negative. 16
• Initially no current flows until the applied voltage is at about the forward junction
potential, after which current rises steeply showing that the forward resistance (I /
V) of the diode is very low; a small increase in voltage giving a large increase in
current.
• The -V and -I axes show the reverse biased condition (bottom left). Here,
although the voltage increases, hardly any current flows.

• This small current is called the leakage current of the diode and is typically only a
few micro-amps with germanium diodes and even less in silicon.
• If a high enough reverse voltage is applied however, there is a point (called the
reverse breakdown voltage) where the insulation of the depletion layer breaks
down, and a very high current suddenly flows.
• In most diodes this breakdown is permanent and a diode subjected to this high
reverse voltage will be destroyed.

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• There are two types of diodes;
• (1) pn diodes based on junction of p-type semiconductor and n-type semiconductor, and
• (2) Schottky diodes based on junction of p- or n-type semiconductor and metal.

• pn-junction diode

• A pn junction is a boundary or interface between two types of semiconductor

material, p-type and n-type, inside a single crystal of semiconductor.

• pn junctions are elementary "building blocks" of most semiconductor

electronic devices such as diodes, transistors, solar cells, LEDs, and integrated
circuits;

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A pn junction has rectifying current–voltage (I–V or IV) characteristics.

Figure. 5 IV characteristics of a pn-diode and its current flow in electical circuit

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 Schottky diode
• There are two kinds of metal–semiconductor junction.

• The junction between metal and heavily doped semiconductors behaves as low-
resistance ohmic contacts (basically electrical shorts).

• Ohmic contacts are an important part of semiconductor devices and have a

significant influence on the performance of high-speed transistors.

• The junctions between metal and lightly doped semiconductors exhibit

rectifying IV characteristics similar to those of pn junctions. They are called
Schottky diodes.

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Figure. 6 IV characteristics of Shottky and Ohmic type of metal-semiconductor junction
and current flow of Schottky diodes in electrical circuit

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• Forward direction is determined by doping type of semiconductor.

• If the Schottky diode is formed by n-type semiconductor and metal, current can flow
when n-type semiconductor is negatively biased.

• If p-type semiconductor and metal forms Schottky diode, positive bias on p-type
semiconductor allows current flow.

• Compared to pn junction diodes, Schottky diodes have smaller turn-on voltage and
steeper IV characteristics.

• The more important point is that Schottky diodes are able to be switched from off to
on, and vice versa, a lot faster than typical pn-junction diodes.

• Shottky diodes, therefore, are mainly used in high speed switching and in high
frequency applications.
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The difference between Diode and Schottky
diode

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3. Experiment plan
1) 1st week: Classification of materials based on their electrical
property
◼ Objectives:
✓ To learn how to classify materials based on their conductivity
✓ To understand the origin of different conductivity of materials
◼ Contents
✓ Measuring IV characteristics of materials using a source measure unit
✓ Calculating resistance from obtained IV curve
✓ Comparing resistance of various materials

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◼ Materials and Equipment
✓ Au, n-doped GaN, Lead resistor (430Ω), Lead resistor (1.2kΩ), SiO2, n-doped Si, undoped Si
✓ SMU (Agilent B2902A)
➢ Supplementary: How to use Agilent B2902A model?
◼ Experimental procedure
(a) Obtain IV characteristics of the given materials using Agilent B2902A.
✓ Measurement condition: voltage sweep from -2V to 2V
✓ Draw the IV characteristics of each material from the given data.

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 (b) Calculate resistance from obtained IV characteristics.
✓ Ohm’s law: Resistance (Ω) = Voltage (V) / Current (A)
✓ Differential resistance (Ω) = ΔVoltage (V) / ΔCurrent (A) = dV/dI
➔ Differential resistance is the slope of I-V curve!
➔ If the I-V curve follows Ohm’s law, resistance is equal to differential resistance.

n-doped Resistor Resistor Undoped n-doped

Au SiO2
GaN (430Ω) (1.2kΩ) Si Si

Resistance (Ω)

(c) Classify the given materials into conductor, semiconductor, and insulator and explain it.
(d) Explain what doping is and effect of doping on conductivity of semiconductors based on the obtained resistance of
undoped Si and n-doped Si.
✓ Conductance is reciprocal of resistance.
✓ Explain the relation between “conductivity and conductance”, and “resistance and resistivity”
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 2) 2ndweek: Metal-semiconductor junction (Schottky diode)
◼ Objectives
✓ To learn the two types of metal-semiconductor junction: Ohmic and Schottky contact
✓ To understand the carrier transport in Schottky diode
◼ Contents
✓ Measuring IV characteristics of the Ohmic metal-semiconductor junction

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✓ Measuring IV characteristics of the Schottky metal-semiconductor junction
✓ Comparing the ohmic and Schottky metal-semiconductor junctions
◼ Materials and Equipment
✓ Schottky barrier diode (GaN-based), Ohmic contact on n-GaN
➢ Supplementary: Schottky barrier diode and ohmic contact on n-GaN
✓ probe station, SMU (Agilent B2902A)
◼ Experimental procedure
(a) Obtain IV characteristics of the given devices.

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(b) Identify the devices using the measured IV characteristics and explain it.
(c) Assume that there is an n-type doped semiconductor which work function is 3.5eV. To make
Schottky contact, which metal should be used? Choose the answer and explain it.
A. A metal which work function is higher than 3.5eV.
B. A metal which work function is smaller than 3.5eV.
C. A metal which work function is 3.5eV.

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 Week Three
• Objective
➢ Light-emitting diodes
➢ Working principle of LEDs
➢ White LED
➢ Spectrum measurement

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Semiconductor based devices: Light-emitting diodes
What is LED?
❖ A light-emitting diode (LED) is a two-terminal semiconductor light source that
resembles a basic pn-junction diode, except that a LED also emits light.
❖ When the enough forward bias is applied to LED, current flows like general pn-
junction diode and light is emitted also in LED.
❖ Not all pn-junction can generate light.
❖ For example, GaN-based pn-junction emits light under the forward bias but Si- or
Ge-based pn-junction doesn’t. GaP-, GaAs-, and GaN-based pn-junction are
generally used for LEDs.

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 Operating principles

➢ When the forward bias is applied on LEDs, electrons are injected from n-type
semiconductor and holes are injected from p-type semiconductors.

➢ Those carriers are faced to each other at the junction and can be recombined.

➢ As a result of carrier recombination, a certain amount of energy is produced in a

form of light or heat.

➢ Si-based pn junction generates only heat by electron-hole recombination, while,

GaN-based pn-junction generates light as well as heat.
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Figure. 7 Working principle of LEDs

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 In Summery
❖ A light-emitting diode is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows
through it.

❖ Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the
form of photons.

❖ The color of the light is determined by the energy required for electrons to cross the
band gap of the semiconductor.

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 ➢ White LED
❑ Light-emitting diodes emit only one color of light in contrast with incandescent bulb or
fluorescent lamp which generates white light.

❑ There are four methods for making white light by LEDs: combination of
(1) red, green and blue LEDs,
(2) two LEDs emitting complementary colors
(3) blue LED and yellow phosphor,
(4) ultraviolet LED and green, red, yellow phosphor.

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• Red, green, and blue are the three primary colors of light. Therefore, combination of
these three colors results in white light.

• Mixing of two complementary colors, for example, mixing of blue-green and orange,
also produces white light.

• Similarly, blue LED and yellow phosphor can make white light due to mixing of yellow
from phosphor and blue from LED.

• Yellow phosphor absorbs some portion of blue light from LED and emits yellow light.

• RGB phosphors emit red, green, blue light simultaneously and it results in white light.
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Figure. 8 Four methods to make white light using LEDs
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• Chromaticity diagram shown in Figure 9 informs us result of color mixing.

Figure. 9 Chromaticity diagram

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 What are two differences between LEDs and
incandescent bulbs?

• Incandescent light bulbs are cheaper than LED.

• They are also more widely available, though LED is becoming more popular over
time.
• LED, however, is noted for its long lifespan, energy efficiency and low maintenance
costs

• LEDs emit very little heat. In comparison, incandescent bulbs release 90% of their
energy as heat and release about 80% of their energy as heat.

• Lifetime: LED lighting products typically last much longer than other lighting types.

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Applications and uses of LEDs can be seen in:
•TV Backlighting.

•Smartphone Backlighting.

•LED displays.

•Automotive Lighting.

•Dimming of lights.

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