Solid State Electronic Devices, 7th Edition

1.1 Semiconductor Materials

Semiconductors are a group of materials having electrical conductivities intermediate between metals and insulators. It is significant that the conductivity of these materials can be varied over orders of magnitude by changes in temperature, optical excitation, and impurity content. This variability of electrical properties makes the semiconductor materials natural choices for electronic device investigations.

Semiconductor materials are found in column IV and neighboring columns of the periodic table (Table 1–1). The column IV semiconductors, silicon and germanium, are called elemental semiconductors because they are composed of single species of atoms. In addition to the elemental materials, compounds of column ...