Latest revision as of 17:00, 6 September 2024

A semiconductor is a material whose conductivity characteristics can be varied. That is, a semiconductor is any material that can function as an insulator under certain conditions and as a conductor under other conditions.

A semiconductor's electrical conductivity is intermediate between that of an insulator and a conductor. Commonly used semiconducting materials are silicon, germanium, gallium arsenide and indium phosphide.

Some of the properties of semiconductor materials were observed throughout the mid 19th and first decades of the 20th century. The first practical application of semiconductors in electronics was the 1904 development of the cat's-whisker detector, a primitive semiconductor diode used in early radio receivers. Developments in quantum physics in turn led to the development of the first transistor in 1947,^[1] and the MOS transistor and integrated circuit chip in 1959.

Overview[edit]

A semiconductor is a material that can vary in conductivity - ranging from a being an insulator to being a conductor, depending on the conditions. Although many pure elements satisfy this definition, the semiconductor industry relies on just a few common ones: silicon, germanium, and gallium for the manufacturing of electronic devices.

In its pure state, a semiconductor is referred to as an intrinsic semiconductor. The properties of intrinsic semiconductors can be finely controlled through the intentional introduction of impurities called dopants. The new semiconductor which underwent a doping process is called an extrinsic semiconductor. Doping allows the manipulation of certain regions of the semiconductor called n-type and p-type, making the region more negative or positive respectively. The combination of those two types forms the basis for all semiconductor devices.

Early history of semiconductors[edit]

See also: Semiconductor device and Timeline of electrical and electronic engineering

The history of the understanding of semiconductors begins with experiments on the electrical properties of materials. The properties of negative temperature coefficient of resistance, rectification, and light-sensitivity were observed starting in the early 19th century.

Thomas Johann Seebeck was the first to notice an effect due to semiconductors, in 1821.^[2] In 1833, Michael Faraday reported that the resistance of specimens of silver sulfide decreases when they are heated. This is contrary to the behavior of metallic substances such as copper. In 1839, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel reported observation of a voltage between a solid and a liquid electrolyte when struck by light, the photovoltaic effect. In 1873 Willoughby Smith observed that selenium resistors exhibit decreasing resistance when light falls on them. In 1874, Karl Ferdinand Braun observed conduction and rectification in metallic sulfides, although this effect had been discovered much earlier by Peter Munck af Rosenschold (sv) writing for the Annalen der Physik und Chemie in 1835,^[3] and Arthur Schuster found that a copper oxide layer on wires has rectification properties that ceases when the wires are cleaned. William Grylls Adams and Richard Evans Day observed the photovoltaic effect in selenium in 1876.^[4]

A unified explanation of these phenomena required a theory of solid-state physics which developed greatly in the first half of the 20th Century. In 1878 Edwin Herbert Hall demonstrated the deflection of flowing charge carriers by an applied magnetic field, the Hall effect. The discovery of the electron by J.J. Thomson in 1897 prompted theories of electron-based conduction in solids. Karl Baedeker, by observing a Hall effect with the reverse sign to that in metals, theorized that copper iodide had positive charge carriers. Johan Koenigsberger classified solid materials as metals, insulators and "variable conductors" in 1914 although his student Josef Weiss already introduced the term Halbleiter (semiconductor in modern meaning) in PhD thesis in 1910.^[5][6] Felix Bloch published a theory of the movement of electrons through atomic lattices in 1928. In 1930, B. Gudden stated that conductivity in semiconductors was due to minor concentrations of impurities. By 1931, the band theory of conduction had been established by Alan Herries Wilson and the concept of band gaps had been developed. Walter H. Schottky and Nevill Francis Mott developed models of the potential barrier and of the characteristics of a metal–semiconductor junction. By 1938, Boris Davydov had developed a theory of the copper-oxide rectifier, identifying the effect of the p–n junction and the importance of minority carriers and surface states.^[7]

Agreement between theoretical predictions (based on developing quantum mechanics) and experimental results was sometimes poor. This was later explained by John Bardeen as due to the extreme "structure sensitive" behavior of semiconductors, whose properties change dramatically based on tiny amounts of impurities.^[7] Commercially pure materials of the 1920s containing varying proportions of trace contaminants produced differing experimental results. This spurred the development of improved material refining techniques, culminating in modern semiconductor refineries producing materials with parts-per-trillion purity.

Devices using semiconductors were at first constructed based on empirical knowledge, before semiconductor theory provided a guide to construction of more capable and reliable devices.

Alexander Graham Bell used the light-sensitive property of selenium to transmit sound over a beam of light in 1880. A working solar cell, of low efficiency, was constructed by Charles Fritts in 1883 using a metal plate coated with selenium and a thin layer of gold; the device became commercially useful in photographic light meters in the 1930s.^[7] Point-contact microwave detector rectifiers made of lead sulfide were used by Jagadish Chandra Bose in 1904; the cat's-whisker detector using natural galena or other materials became a common device in the development of radio. However, it was somewhat unpredictable in operation and required manual adjustment for best performance. In 1906 H.J. Round observed light emission when electric current passed through silicon carbide crystals, the principle behind the light-emitting diode. Oleg Losev observed similar light emission in 1922 but at the time the effect had no practical use. Power rectifiers, using copper oxide and selenium, were developed in the 1920s and became commercially important as an alternative to vacuum tube rectifiers.^[4][7]

The first semiconductor devices used galena, including German physicist Ferdinand Braun's crystal detector in 1874 and Bengali physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose's radio crystal detector in 1901.^[8][9]

In the years preceding World War II, infrared detection and communications devices prompted research into lead-sulfide and lead-selenide materials. These devices were used for detecting ships and aircraft, for infrared rangefinders, and for voice communication systems. The point-contact crystal detector became vital for microwave radio systems, since available vacuum tube devices could not serve as detectors above about 4000 MHz; advanced radar systems relied on the fast response of crystal detectors. Considerable research and development of silicon materials occurred during the war to develop detectors of consistent quality.^[7]

Early transistors[edit]

Main article: History of the transistor

Detector and power rectifiers could not amplify a signal. Many efforts were made to develop a solid-state amplifier and were successful in developing a device called the point contact transistor which could amplify 20db or more.^[7] In 1922 Oleg Losev developed two-terminal, negative resistance amplifiers for radio, and he perished in the Siege of Leningrad after successful completion. In 1926 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld patented a device resembling a field-effect transistor, but it was not practical. R. Hilsch and R. W. Pohl in 1938 demonstrated a solid-state amplifier using a structure resembling the control grid of a vacuum tube; although the device displayed power gain, it had a cut-off frequency of one cycle per second, too low for any practical applications, but an effective application of the available theory.^[7] At Bell Labs, William Shockley and A. Holden started investigating solid-state amplifiers in 1938. The first p–n junction in silicon was observed by Russell Ohl about 1941, when a specimen was found to be light-sensitive, with a sharp boundary between p-type impurity at one end and n-type at the other. A slice cut from the specimen at the p–n boundary developed a voltage when exposed to light.

The first working transistor was a point-contact transistor invented by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain and William Shockley at Bell Labs in 1947. Shockley had earlier theorized a field-effect amplifier made from germanium and silicon, but he failed to build such a working device, before eventually using germanium to invent the point-contact transistor.^[10] In France, during the war, Herbert Mataré had observed amplification between adjacent point contacts on a germanium base. After the war, Mataré's group announced their "Transistron" amplifier only shortly after Bell Labs announced the "transistor".

In 1954, physical chemist Morris Tanenbaum fabricated the first silicon junction transistor at Bell Labs.^[11] However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialised applications.^[12]

Silicon semiconductors[edit]

Main articles: Silicon and Silicon Age

See also: Surface passivation and Thermal oxidation

Mohamed Atalla invented the surface passivation process in 1957, MOSFET in 1959, and MOS integrated circuit chip in 1960.

The first silicon semiconductor device was a silicon radio crystal detector, developed by American engineer Greenleaf Whittier Pickard in 1906.^[9] In 1940, Russell Ohl discovered the p-n junction and photovoltaic effects in silicon. In 1941, techniques for producing high-purity germanium and silicon crystals were developed for radar microwave detectors during World War II.^[8] In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick at Bell Labs accidentally discovered that silicon dioxide (SiO₂) could be grown on silicon,^[13] and they later proposed this could mask silicon surfaces during diffusion processes in 1958.^[14]

In the early years of the semiconductor industry, up until the late 1950s, germanium was the dominant semiconductor material for transistors and other semiconductor devices, rather than silicon. Germanium was initially considered the more effective semiconductor material, as it was able to demonstrate better performance due to higher carrier mobility.^[15][16] The relative lack of performance in early silicon semiconductors was due to electrical conductivity being limited by unstable quantum surface states,^[17] where electrons are trapped at the surface, due to dangling bonds that occur because unsaturated bonds are present at the surface.^[18] This prevented electricity from reliably penetrating the surface to reach the semiconducting silicon layer.^[19][20]

A breakthrough in silicon semiconductor technology came with the work of Egyptian engineer Mohamed Atalla, who developed the process of surface passivation by thermal oxidation at Bell Labs in the late 1950s.^[18][21][16] He discovered that the formation of a thermally grown silicon dioxide layer greatly reduced the concentration of electronic states at the silicon surface,^[21] and that silicon oxide layers could be used to electrically stabilize silicon surfaces.^[22] Atalla first published his findings in Bell memos during 1957, and then demonstrated it in 1958.^[23][24] This was the first demonstration to show that high-quality silicon dioxide insulator films could be grown thermally on the silicon surface to protect the underlying silicon p-n junction diodes and transistors.^[14] Atalla's surface passivation process enabled silicon to surpass the conductivity and performance of germanium, and led to silicon replacing germanium as the dominant semiconductor material.^[16][17] Atalla's surface passivation process is considered the most important advance in silicon semiconductor technology, paving the way for the mass-production of silicon semiconductor devices.^[25] By the mid-1960s, Atalla's process for oxidized silicon surfaces was used to fabricate virtually all integrated circuits and silicon devices.^[26] Surface passivation by thermal oxidation remains a key feature of silicon semiconductor technology.^[27]

MOS transistor[edit]

Main article: MOSFET

Further information: MOS integrated circuit and MOS revolution

See also: List of semiconductor scale examples and Transistor count

The MOSFET (MOS transistor) was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng in 1959.

In the late 1950s, Mohamed Atalla utilized his surface passivation and thermal oxidation methods to develop the metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) process, which he proposed could be used to build the first working silicon field-effect transistor.^[19][20] This led to the invention of the MOSFET (MOS field-effect transistor) by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng in 1959.^[28][23] It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses,^[12] With its scalability,^[29] and much lower power consumption and higher density than bipolar junction transistors,^[30] the MOSFET became the most common type of transistor in computers, electronics,^[20] and communications technology such as smartphones.^[31] The US Patent and Trademark Office calls the MOSFET a "groundbreaking invention that transformed life and culture around the world".^[31]

The CMOS (complementary MOS) process was developed by Chih-Tang Sah and Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963.^[32] The first report of a floating-gate MOSFET was made by Dawon Kahng and Simon Sze in 1967.^[33] FinFET (fin field-effect transistor), a type of 3D multi-gate MOSFET, was developed by Digh Hisamoto and his team of researchers at Hitachi Central Research Laboratory in 1989.^[34][35]

See also[edit]

• Semiconductor devices
  • Transistors
  • Diodes
  • Microprocessors
  • Thermistors
  • Solar cells
  • Piezoresistors
• Electrical engineering

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Howstuffworks' semiconductor page
• US Navy Electrical Engineering Training Series
• NSM-Archive Physical Properties of Semiconductors
• Semiconductor Concepts at Hyperphysics
• Principles of Semiconductor Devices by Bart Van Zeghbroeck, University of Colorado
• Semiconductor OneSource Hall of Fame, Glossary