Syllabus

Introduction: Moore’s law and technology development. International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS); Technology and material challenges limiting Moore’s law. Contacts : Fabrication of Junction, Metal-semiconductor contacts, Schottky barrier. Contact resistance: 2-probe and 4-probe measurements; Kelvin and van der Pau structures; pn junctions: carrier transport. Equilibrium conditions, Steady state conditions, Transients and AC conditions. MOS devices : Oxide charges and band-bending, Capacitance – Voltage (C-V) behavior of pMOS and nMOS devices, dissipation factor, band-diagram and degeneracy at accumulation and inversion, depletion width, Mott-Schottky plot and carrier concentration. Frequency dispersion of capacitance, correction of high-frequency capacitance, interface states, parallel conductance measurements, Equivalent oxide thickness (EOT); Leakage current mechanisms through MOS devices – space charges and Child’s law, Schottky emission, direct tunneling, band diagram under external field: Fowler-Nordheim tunneling, Poole- Frenkel charge injection. MOSFET devices : Process technology of fabricating a MOSFET, degenerate states of inversion and formation of the channel, Operation of a MOSFET: Output characteristics: conduction through the channel at low fields; linear regime and Ohm’s law: surface mobility and bulk mobility of charges in a semiconductor. Factors influencing the mobility and mobility saturation; pinch-off and drain-current saturation; Threshold voltage of a MOSFET, Sub-threshold conduction in a MOSFET, transfer characteristics, transconductance and subthreshold swing, cutoff frequency. The Non-ideal MOSFET behavior: effects of Shottky contacts, influence of the oxide charges. MOSFET scaling : scaling roadmap, Short-channel effects: Short-channel effect in transfer and output characteristics. Introduction to Nanoelectronics : Single molecule field effect transistors, Nanowire FET’s, Single electron transistors, Single electron tunneling (SET) devices: Coulomb blockade phenomenon. Nano-scale flash memory devices – Yano memory devices, Resonant tunneling devices (RTD). Optoelectronics devices : Photodiodes, Light emitting diodes, semiconductor lasers.