Semiconductor Physics: An Introduction - Hardcover

Seeger, Karlheinz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 354065786X ISBN 13: 9783540657866

Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. K, 1999

Synopsis

This text is suitable for the senior undergraduate or new graduate student majoring in electrical engineering or physics. It will also be useful to solid-state scientists and device engineers involved in semi-conductor design and technology. The text provides a lucid account of band structure, density of states, charge transport, energy transport and optical processes, and a detailed description of many devices. It includes sections on superlattices and quantum well structures, the effects of deep-level impurities on transport, the quantum Hall effect and the calculation of the influence of a magnetic field on the carrier distribution function. This 7th edition has been revised and corrected, and new sections have been added to some chapters, for example a section on the fractional quantum Hall effect.

About this title

About the Author

Karlheinz Seeger taught both semiconductor physics and solid state physics from 1966 to 1995 at the University of Vienna (Austria), earlier bc worked as a Research Associate in the experimental physics group of Professor John Bardeen at the University of Illinois (Urbana, III., USA) from 1957 to 1958. His undergraduate work was at the University of Göttingen from 1945 to 1950, followed by graduate work at the University of Heidelberg (both in Germany) from 1951 to 1955 with Professor Otto Haxel as his mentor. From 1961 to 1965 he taught the basic physics course to students of medicine at Heidelberg. In 1966 he accepted an offer from the University of Vienna. In 1968 he also became Head of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Solid State Physics there. He has now retired from both positions but remains a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Prof. Seeger's research in solid state physics began with experimental studies of ("delayed") "exoelectron" emission from metals and semiconductors following mechanical abrasion or ultraviolet or X-ray irradiation, both in vacuum and various gaseous atmospheres. The emission is a side effect of freshly prepared Geiger counters, and Haxel's own mentor had been Hans Geiger. Later work at Illinois had to do with "hot electrons- inside semiconductors, and heating was done with microwaves. Back in Heidelberg, Seeger invented a microwave harmonic mixing technique for detecting small deviations from Ohm's law in semiconductors. He also advised students in preparing surface p-n junctions for the detection of nuclear particles. This work was done in Haxel's nuclear physics institute at a time when these detectors were not yet available commercially. When at the beginning seventies an oil crisis was caused by the OPEC, he advised students in Vienna about preparing cheap semiconductor photovoltaic cells for terrestrial conversion of solar energy to electricity, in cooperation with the Shell Oil Company. His work on nonohmic conduction in one-dimensional organic metals in single-crystalline form earned him an invitation as senior scientist at the IBM Research Lab San José (California) from 1977 to 1978 where he was the first to investigate the Hall effect in undoped polyacetylene. Along with collaborators at Vienna, he performed microwave harmonic mixing experiments with charge-density-wave conductors. His investigations of the dielectric constant of various high-resistivity semiconductors by microwave interference in a waveguide gave rise to a new precision method.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. K
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 354065786X
• ISBN 13: 9783540657866
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 532