ECE Purdue Semiconductor Fundamentals L4.6: Carrier Transport - Recap

Table of Contents available below.

This course provides the essential foundations required to understand the operation of semiconductor devices such as transistors, diodes, solar cells, light-emitting devices, and more. The material will primarily appeal to electrical engineering students whose interests are in applications of semiconductor devices in circuits and systems. The treatment is physical and intuitive, and not heavily mathematical.

Technology users will gain an understanding of the semiconductor physics that is the basis for devices. Semiconductor technology developers may find it a useful starting point for diving deeper into condensed matter physics, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and materials science. The course presents an electrical engineering perspective on semiconductors, but those in other fields may find it a useful introduction to the approach that has guided the development of semiconductor technology for the past 50+ years.

Table of Contents:
00:00 Lecture 4.6: Unit 4 Recap
00:15 Unit 4 Learning Outcomes
02:03 Current equation (Landauer approach)
02:59 Transmission
03:59 Channels
05:06 How current flows (T = 0 K)
07:24 Fermi window under small bias
08:39 Small bias conductance
09:20 Small bias conductance at T = 0 K
10:06 Quantized conductance
11:07 Small bias conductance in the diffusive limit
12:16 Drift-diffusion equation
13:04 Drift velocity
14:49 Drift current
16:08 Diffusion current
17:22 Drift-diffusion equations
17:52 Validity of the DD equations
19:19 Recombination
20:43 Band-to-band (radiative) recombination
21:40 Auger recombination
22:23 SRH (defect-assisted) recombination
23:44 Recombination under low level injection
24:32 Multiple recombination processes
24:55 Recombination processes
25:55 Generation processes
26:46 SRH (defect-assisted) generation
27:54 Optical absorption and thermalization
29:11 Optical absorption in a direct gap semiconductor
30:12 Optical absorption in an indirect gap semiconductor
31:17 Summary: Unit 4 Learning Outcomes