ECE 352
Device Electronics
Usually offered: Spring
Required course: Yes
Course Level
Undergraduate
Units
3
Instructor(s)
Kelly S. Potter, Professor
Dale Hetherington, Professor of Practice
Prerequisite(s)
Advanced Standing: Engineering. Major: ECE. Prerequisite or concurrent enrollment in ECE 351C.
Course Texts
Required Texts:
- Solid State Electronic Devices, 7th Edition by B. Streetman and S. K. Banerjee, Pearson.
- The book is immediately available on the D2L course site and costs $30 for 180 days rent. You can OPT OUT if you want but you need to decide within 2 weeks from the start of the course, otherwise, you will be automatically charged $30 from the UofA Bursars office. You will receive a notice about the deadline to OPT OUT.
Schedule
Two 75-minute lecture sessions per week, Tu/Th 11:00AM - 12:45PM.
Course Description
Required/elective: ElectIve CE; Required EE
Specific Course Information:
2021-2022 Catalog Data: Electronic properties of semiconductors; carrier transport phenomena; P-N junctions; bipolar, unipolar, microwave and photonic devices.
Learning Outcomes
Specific Goals for the Course:
Outcomes of Instruction: By the end of this course the student will be able to:
- Understand basic cubic crystal structure and origin of semiconductor characteristics: conduction band, valence band, energy gap, dopant atoms, host atoms, intrinsic and extrinsic materials, fixed charges and mobile carriers.
- Understand density of states and Fermi-Dirac distribution functions, effective mass, semiconductor bandgap and carrier statistics, kinetic and potential carrier energies.
- Calculate properties of intrinsic and extrinsic semiconductor materials, e.g., Fermi levels, carrier concentrations.
- Apply principles of carrier drift to determine field-dependent transport, conductivity, resistivity, resistance, and sheet resistance.
- Apply principles of carrier diffusion to determine carrier gradient-dependent transport.
- Understand band diagrams and determine carrier potential and kinetic energies.
- Utilize defect densities and carrier recombination processes to calculate generation and recombination rates in semiconductor devices and materials.
- Apply continuity equation to solve dynamics of carrier transport and recombination in semiconductor devices.
- Calculate carrier densities, quasi-Fermi levels, and currents in biased PN junctions.
- Determine device/material parameters given an experimental energy diagram characteristic for p-n junction and MOS capacitor structures.
- Determine MOS transistor parameters from device process variables such as substrate doping, channel length, gate oxide thickness.
- Understand the basic current mechanisms and device operation in a Bipolar Junction Transistor. Calculate current gain and base transport factor and emitter injection efficiency.
- Identify deviations in ideal and real device characteristics.
Course Topics
A brief list of topics to be covered:
- Chapter 1: Crystal Properties and Growth of Semiconductors – Cubic Lattices, planes and directions, Miller indices, reciprocal lattice. Translating crystal planes to Miller indices, how reciprocal is related to physical lattice points.
- Chapter 2: Atoms and Electrons – wave-particle duality, Bohr model, electronic structure of atoms and the periodic table, and energy levels in a Silicon atom.
- Chapter 3: Energy Band and Charge Carriers in Semiconductors – conduction and valence bands, understand band gaps, doping in semiconductors, the density of states and Fermi-Dirac statistics, carrier concentration calculations, drift current mechanism and calculations, carrier mobility and effective mass.
- Chapter 4: Excess Carriers in Semiconductors – photon interaction with direct and indirect bandgap semiconductors, generation-recombination of excess carriers.
- Chapter 5: P-N Junctions – fabrication process to form a p-n junction using ion-implantation, equilibrium, forward and reverse bias energy band diagrams, depletion region, current flow derivation, junction capacitance.
- Chapter 6: Field-Effect Transistors – basic structure, the fabrication process for MOSFET, MOSFET band diagram, MOS capacitor, device operation for enhancement mode MOSFET, threshold voltage calculation, Current-voltage in linear and saturation regions, small-signal model, second-order effects.
- Chapter 7: Bipolar Junction Transistors – basic structure, energy band diagrams, device operation, current gain, base transport factor, emitter injection efficiency, I-V characteristics, Ebers-Mohl model, small-signal model, second-order effects.
Relationship to Student Outcomes
ECE 352 contributes directly to the following specific electrical and computer engineering student outcomes of the ECE department:
1. An ability to identify, formulate, and solve complex engineering problems by applying principles of engineering, science, and mathematics.
2. An ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors.
3. An ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.
Syllabus Prepared By
Syllabus updated on 3/29/2022