Semiconductor

Technology
General Concepts

Darwin D. Mañaga, PECE, ACPE

Master of Engineering,
Major in Electronics Engineering

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 Agenda
• The Atom
• The Periodic Table of Elements
• Chemical Bonding
• Semiconductor Materials
• Material Properties
• Energy Band Diagram
• Intrinsic Semiconductor
• Concept of a Hole
• Doping
• Carrier Transport: Drift and Diffusion Currents
• The PN Junction
• MOSFET
• BJT
• FinFET
• Quiz
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 The Atom
• An atom is the smallest chemically not further divisible component of matter.
• Depending on the atom, it is composed of a certain number of electrons, protons,
and neutrons.
• An atom is the building blocks of matter.
• An atom is mostly an empty space.
• In an atom, 99.9% of the total mass is the nucleus

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 The Periodic Table of Elements
• The periodic table of the chemical elements (periodic table) lists all the chemical
elements with increasing proton number (atomic number) and according to their
chemical properties, divided into periods as well as main and subgroups.

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 Chemical Bonding
• Atoms bond (stick) together and form molecules.
• Alkaline metals like to give electrons.
• Halogens (non-metals) like to take electrons.
• Ionic Bond - are formed by the fusion of metals and nonmetals. eg: Na+Cl-
• Atomic Bond (aka Covalent Bond) – It’s a nature thing to achieve a stable
configuration (octet of electrons) by “sharing” valence electrons – eg: F2, O2
• Metallic Bond – swarming of electrons (eg: sea of electrons in iron)

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 Semiconductor Materials
• Conductor – Any material that will support generous flow of charge when a voltage is
applied across its terminals

• Insulator – Any material that offers very low conductivity when a voltage is applied across
its terminals

• Semiconductor – Any material that has conductivity more than insulators but less than
conductors

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Material Properties

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Energy Band Diagram
The electronic band structure is an energy schema to describe the conductivity of
conductors, insulators, and semiconductors. The schema consists of two energy
bands (valence and conduction band) and the band gap.

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 Gas Law in Thermodynamics
There is a profound relationship between the gas law in thermodynamics and in
semiconductor materials, we call this the Boltzmann Processes / Statistics
All microscopic processes are subject to thermal actuation and random motion due
to the energy received from the sun.

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Intrinsic Semiconductor

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Intrinsic Density 3
(/cm )
ni = BT3/2e(-Eg/2kT)
ni = intrinsic carrier (cm-3 )
B = constant related to semiconductor material
T = Temperature in Kelvin
k = Boltzmann's constant (86x10-6 eV/K)
Eg = Bandgap energy (eV)

Material Eg (eV) B(cm-3K-3/2)

Si 1.1 5.23X1015
GaAs 1.4 2.10X1014
Ge 0.67 1.66X1015

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 Concept of a Hole
• In general, there are
two charge carriers
in a semiconductor:
• Electrons
• Holes

• Mass Action Law

np = ni2

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Doping
• Doping is the process of adding impurities to an intrinsic material

• A semiconductor material that has been subjected to the doping

process is called an extrinsic material.

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Observations
• What happens to p in an N-type silicon?
• What happens to n and p in an N-type silicon as the temperature
“T” increases?

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Summary
N-type P-Type
Nd Na
n = Nd p = Na

p = ni2 / Nd n = ni2 / Na

Mass Action Law

np = ni2
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Carrier Transport: Drift and Diffusion

• Drift current density – conduction of current per cross sectional area created with
the application of electric field on a semiconductor material

Jdrift = Jn + Jp = ( µnnq + µppq )E

• Diffusion current density – conduction of current per cross sectional area created
due to movement of charge carriers from region of high concentration to the low
concentration region of a semiconductor material

Jdiff = Jn + Jp = ( Dndn/dx – Dpdp/dx )q

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Einstein Equation

VT = kT / q = Dn / µn = Dp / µp

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The PN Junction (Equilibrium)

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Concept of Built In Voltage and Depletion
Width

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The PN Junction (Reverse Bias)

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The PN Junction (Forward Bias)

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Observations
For a forward bias
configuration, how much
should the voltage VD
increase to raise the diode
current Itot by a factor of 10?

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 Observations
For a forward bias PN junction, what happens to the forward voltage when
temperature increases?

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Summary of Equations

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MOSFET

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MOSFET

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THE CMOS Technology

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MOSFET (General Layout)

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MOSFET (General Layout)

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MOSFET (General Layout)

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BJT

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BJT (General Layout)

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Comparison of BJT and MOS

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FinFET
A fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) is a multi-gate device, a
MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) built on
a substrate where the gate is placed on two, three, or four sides of the
channel or wrapped around the channel, forming a double gate
structure.

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2 nd Order Effects
Some of MOSFET’s 2nd Order Effects:

• Channel Length Modulation

• Velocity Saturation
• Mobility Degradation
• Threshold Voltage
• Temperature Dependence
• Leakage
• Short Channel Effects:
• Drain Induced Barrier Lowering (DIBL)

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Why it is called so?
Why it is required?

• Solution for short

channel effects
• Better electric field
distribution resulting
to better current
control
• Better scalability
• Low Power
consumption

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Conventional MOS vs FinFET

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Suggested References

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 Questions?

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