Course abstract

This course seeks to cover the basics of semiconductor devices including the physics of energy bands, doping and carrier statistics and transport leading up to the understanding of common semiconductor devices including p-n junctions and their applications, BJTs and MOSFETs. The course will also give a flavour of the basics of compound semiconductors and their devices, and also touch base with opto-electronic devices such as solar cells, photodetectors and LEDs. The course will ensure that undergraduates, college teachers and other interested audience with no background in semiconductors are able to grasp the content. In parallel, the course will consistently seek to engage the audience by giving real-life examples pertaining to the content, and also seek to calibrate the content with respect to practical and commercial technologies which are all around us and which use semiconductor devices. There will be enough food for thought even for advanced learners such as PhD students and active researchers.