Salahaddin University

Engineering College
Electrical Department
First Year

Principles of Electronics
Chapter One
By: Hemin Ali Qadir
2015
OUTLINES
Part III:
CURRENT IN SEMICONDUCTORS
Covalent Bonds
Current in Semiconductors
Electron and hole current
COVALENT BONDS
In a solid/crystalline material, atoms
are combined in a symmetrical
pattern.
Covalent bonds means sharing of
covalent electrons among atoms.
The atoms within the crystal structure
are held together by covalent bonds
Silicon and Germanium are a Silicon covalent
crystalline materials. bonding
A silicon atom shares each of its own
four valence electrons with its four
neighbors.
This bounding gives the silicon crystal
and stable state.
COVALENT BONDS
CURRENT IN SEMICONDUCTORS
In conductor materials, current is
established easily? Why?
Because valence electrons are easily
excited to jump to conduction band
by an external energy.
In semiconductors, electrons are
freed in the same way, but greater
amount of energy is required.
There are no electrons in the
conduction band for an unexcited
atom in a intrinsic (pure) silicon
crystal.

Energy band diagram for an unexcited

atom in a pure (intrinsic) silicon crystal.
CURRENT IN SEMICONDUCTORS
The number of free electrons in a material is heavily dependent on
temperature.
At absolute zero (-273 C, or 0 K) all electrons have zero energy.
For semiconductors, the conductivity increases with temperature.
That means semiconductor has a negative temperature
coefficient of resistance.
However, conductors have a positive temperature coefficient of
resistance. Why?
CURRENT IN SEMICONDUCTORS
For intrinsic silicon crystal, room
temperature (25 - 27 degree) is
sufficient thermal energy for some
valence electrons to jump to the
conduction band.
When an electron jumps to the
conduction band, a vacancy is left
in the valence band within the
crystal.
This vacancy is called a hole.
Recombination occurs when a
conduction-band electron
loses energy and falls back into a
hole.
 CURRENT IN SEMICONDUCTORS
The free electrons are drifting randomly throughout the material.
 ELECTRON AND HOLE CURRENT
When a voltage is applied across a piece of intrinsic silicon the
thermally generated free electrons are now easily attracted toward
the positive end.
This movement of free electrons is one type of current in a
semiconductor material and is called electron current.
This current is established in the conduction band
 ELECTRON AND HOLE CURRENT
Another type of current occurs in the valence band.
The holes created by the free electrons exist.
Remaining electrons in the valence band can move into a nearby hole
with little change in its energy Level.
When a valence electron moves left to right to fill a hole while leaving
another hole behind, the hole has effectively moved from right to left.
This movement of holes (which is actually the movement of valence
electrons) produces current called hole current.
OUTILNE
Part IV:
N-TYPE AND P-TYPE SEMICONDUCTORS
Types of impure semiconductors
N-Type semiconductor
P-type semiconductor
TYPES OF EXTRINSIC (IMPURE) SEMICONDUCTOR
MATERIALS
Semiconductor materials do not conduct current well.
This is because of the limited number of free electrons in the
conduction band and holes in the valence band.
Intrinsic silicon (or germanium) must be modified by increasing the
number of free electrons or holes to increase its conductivity and
make it useful in electronic devices.
This is done by adding impurities to the intrinsic material.
The process of adding impurity atoms to the intrinsic semiconductor
atoms is called doping.
Based on the type of impurity atoms, we have to type of impure
semiconductors.
N-type and P-Type semiconductors.
N-TYPE SEMICONDUCTOR
We are able to insert into the crystal
structure of semiconductor an impurity
atom that has 5 instead of 4 electrons
in its valence shell.
Then 4 of those 5 electrons can
participate in the covalent bonding
leaving one extra electron.
This extra electron becomes a
conduction electron because it is not
attached to any atom.
An impurity atom that produces an
extra electron in this way is called a
donor atom.
Examples of donor atom are
phosphorus (P), arsenic (As), and
antimony (Sb).
N-TYPE SEMICONDUCTOR
The number of conduction electrons can be carefully controlled
by the number of impurity atoms added to the silicon.
Since most of the current carriers are electrons, silicon (or
germanium) doped with donor atoms is an N-type semiconductor
The N stands for the negative charge on an electron.
The electrons are called the majority carriers in N-type material.
There are also still a few holes that are created when electron-
hole pairs are thermally generated.
These holes in an N-type material are called minority carriers.
P-TYPE SEMICONDUCTOR
P-type semiconductor is produced
by doping a semiconductor with
impurity atoms that have only 3
electrons in their valence shell.
Example of these atoms are boron
(B), indium (In), and gallium (Ga).
Each of these atoms forms
covalent bonds with four adjacent
semiconductor atoms.
Since four electrons are required
for covalent bonds, a hole results.
Because the impurity atom can
take an electron, it is often referred
to as an acceptor atom.
 P-TYPE SEMICONDUCTOR
Holes can be thought of as positive charges.
The holes are the majority carriers in P-type material.
there are also a few free electrons that are created when electron-
hole pairs are thermally generated.
Electrons in p-type material are the minority carriers.
OUTILNE
Part V
The PN Junction
The PN Junction
The Depletion Region
Barrier Potential
THE PN JUNCTION
When a block of P-type material is joined to a block of N-type material,
a PN junction forms at the boundary between the two regions and a
diode is created.
The p region has many holes (majority carriers) and only a few thermally
generated free electrons (minority carriers).
The n region has many free electrons (majority carriers) and only a few
thermally generated holes (minority carriers).
 THE DEPLETION REGION
Before the pn junction is formed, n-type
material is neutral in terms of net charge.
Because there are as many electrons as
protons in the material.
The same is true for the p-type material.
From n region, electrons diffuse across
the junction.
This creates a layer of positive charges in
the n region near the junction.
the p region loses holes as the electrons
and holes combine.
This creates a layer of negative charges
in the p region near the junction.
These two layers of positive and negative
charges form the depletion region
THE DEPLETION REGION
As electrons continue to diffuse across the junction, more and more
positive and negative charges are created near the junction.
A point is reached where the depletion region repels any further
diffusion of electrons into the P region and the diffusion stops.
In other words, the depletion region acts as a barrier to the further
movement of electrons across the junction.
BARRIER POTENTIAL
According to Coulombs law;
Any time there is a positive charge and a negative charge near
each other, there is a force acting on the charges.
In the depletion region, there are negative and positive charges.
The forces between the opposite charges form an electric field
The potential difference of the electric field across the depletion
region is the amount of voltage required to move electrons through
the electric field.
This potential difference is called the barrier potential 0 and is
expressed in volts.
BARRIER POTENTIAL
The barrier potential of a PN junction depends on several factors,
including
1. The type of semiconductor material (Silicon or Germanium)
2. The amount of doping level in the P and N regions
3. Temperature.
The typical barrier potential is approximately 0.7 V for silicon and
0.3 V for germanium at 25C.
Where:
0 = barrier potential, volts
= Boltzmanns constant = 1.38 1023 J/K
T = temperature of the material in kelvin (K = 273 + )
0 = ln q = electron charge = 1.6 1019 C
2 = acceptor doping density in the P material
= donor doping density in the N material
= intrinsic electron density
BARRIER POTENTIAL
Note that the barrier potential is directly proportional to
temperature.
The temperature plays a very important role in determining
characteristics.
The quantity kT/q in the previous equation has the units of volts and
is called the thermal voltage
Therefore we can rewrite the equation as follow

0 = ln
2
BARRIER POTENTIAL
Example:
A silicon PN junction is formed from P material doped with 1022
acceptor/m3 and N material doped with 1.21021 donor/m3.
Find the thermal voltage and barrier voltage at 25.
If you know the intrinsic electron density of silicon is
= 1.4 1016 /3