History Of Semiconductors

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Silicon (Si) is the best-known semiconductor. Boron, germanium zinc sulfide, Mercury selenide are some the few of hundreds of semiconductors. Semiconductors also could be found in nature like zinc selenide (ZnS), cuprite (CU2O) and galend (PbS). Semiconductors are classified in numerous ways. They exist as pure elements such as Si, B and compounds such as gallium arsenide. Semiconductors could also be categorized as Elemental, Binary and Ternary. • Elemental Semiconductors: These are single elemental semiconductors belong to B subgroups III, IV, V and VI groups of the periodic table. Carbon (diamond) Silicon, Boron, Gray tin, Phosphorous, Germanium, Selenium, and Tellurium are some of the elemental semiconductors. • Compound Semiconductors: They have a chemical composition of two or more elements mainly from group III and V o Binary Compound: As the name depicts binary compounds are made up of two elements. For example SiC, GaAs and CdS. Binary semiconductors could be further divided as IV-VI, III-V, II-VI and I-VII semiconductors. o Ternary Compounds: AlGaAs, CdHgTe are some of the ternary compounds that consist of three elements. It is also necessary to understand the meaning of Intrinsic and Extrinsic. Intrinsic materials have a pure chemical composition without any impurities and thus have less electrical conductivity. For example a pure Si acts as an insulators as there are no free electrons in pure Si structure. Extrinsic crystals are formed when small amounts of impurities are added to intrinsic crystal structure, thus extrinsic crystals have better electrical conductivity than intrinsic crystals. The process of introduction of impurities to intrinsic crystalline structure is known as doping and will be explained below.... ... middle of paper ... ...l voltage could alter the height of the potential barrier. When positive terminal of a battery is connected to n-type and the negative terminal of the battery is connected to the p-type the electrons in the n-type will be attracted to the positive terminal while holes in p-type will be attracted to the negative terminal. Thus the depletion layer will increase preventing a current flow across the p-n junctions. This is called reversed bias. A current flow is only generated when the positive terminal of the battery is connected to the p-type and the negative terminal of the battery is connected to the p-type. The negative terminal will repel the electrons in the n-type while the positive terminal will repel the holes in p-type and as a result the depletion layer will be reduced and this is called forward bias. Thus diodes will only function when it is in forward bias.

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