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A compound semiconductor is a semiconductor compound composed of chemical elements of at least two different species. These semiconductors form for example in periodic table groups 13–15 (old groups III–V), for example of elements from the Boron group (old group III, boron, aluminium, gallium, indium) and from group 15 (old group V, nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony, bismuth).
A fourth element is often added to a I-III-VI 2 material to tune the bandgap for maximum solar cell efficiency. A representative example is copper indium gallium selenide (CuIn x Ga (1– x ) Se 2 , E g = 1.7–1.0 eV for x = 0–1 [ 1 ] ), which is used in copper indium gallium selenide solar cells .
[6] A few 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.
A semiconductor device is an electronic component that relies on the electronic properties of a semiconductor material (primarily silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide, as well as organic semiconductors) for its function. Its conductivity lies between conductors and insulators. Semiconductor devices have replaced vacuum tubes in
II-VI semiconductor compounds are produced with epitaxy methods, like most semiconductor compounds. [2] The substrate plays an important role for all fabrication methods. Best growth results are obtained by substrates made from the same compound ( homoepitaxy ), but substrates of other semiconductors are often used to reduce the fabrication ...
Absorption is the active process in photodiodes, solar cells and other semiconductor photodetectors, while stimulated emission is the principle of operation in laser diodes. Besides light excitation, carriers in semiconductors can also be generated by an external electric field, for example in light-emitting diodes and transistors.
Doping of a pure silicon array. Silicon based intrinsic semiconductor becomes extrinsic when impurities such as boron and antimony are introduced.. In semiconductor production, doping is the intentional introduction of impurities into an intrinsic (undoped) semiconductor for the purpose of modulating its electrical, optical and structural properties.
The term solid-state became popular at the beginning of the semiconductor era in the 1960s to distinguish this new technology. A semiconductor device works by controlling an electric current consisting of electrons or holes moving within a solid crystalline piece of semiconducting material such as silicon, while the thermionic vacuum tubes it replaced worked by controlling a current of ...