Midterm 1

  • Monday, March 3 at the usual lecture time and place. Open book, notes, and calculators allowed.


    The usual prohibitions against communications devices apply.
  • Topics covered, as announced in lecture on Feb 29, are listed below.
    2 questions: 1 more qualititative, 1 quantitative.
    Don't expect identical problems to the homework, but of course there won't be any completely bizarre questions.
  • Semiconductor physics:
    • Bohr model
    • Atoms to semiconductors
    • Band models & band gap
    • Bonding models & impurities
    • Intrinsic and doped semiconductors
    • Density of states
    • Fermi-Dirac statistics/Boltzmann statistics (and when to use which)
    • EF, Ei
    • n, p, Nc , Nv , ni
    • Mass action law np=ni2 (and when it does/doesn't apply)
    • Charge neutrality
  • Carrier transport:
    • Drift current
    • Mobility (and know where the graph is in Pierret!)
    • Resistivity (don't count on using the book graph)
    • Band bending
    • Diffusion (the process)
    • Diffusion current
    • Diffusivity constant Dp
    • Drift and diffusion in equilibrium (calculate)
    • Ef : when it is/isn't constant and what that means
    • Recombination & generation, GL (note that diode part is not included, will not be on exam)
    • Quasi-Fermi levels
  • Diode electrostatics:
    • Step (abrupt) junction diodes (quantitatively), linear diodes, others? . . .
    • ρ, ε, V distributions
    • Vbi
    • xn, xp, W, and the effects of VA on them
  • Class score results