ECE 656: Electronic Transport in Semiconductors (Fall 2009)

The course consists of three main parts. Part 1 focuses on near-equilibrium transport in the presence of small gradients in the electrochemical potential or temperature, with or without the application of a small magnetic field. The emphasis in Part 2 is on the physics of carrier scattering and how the microscopic scattering processes are related to macroscopic relaxation times and mean-free-paths. Part three examines high-field transport in bulk semiconductors and so-called “non-local” transport in sub-micron devices. The course concludes with a brief introduction to quantum transport. The objective of the course is to develop a broad understanding of the basic concepts needed to understand modern electronic devices. It is designed for those who work on electronic devices – whether they are experimentalists, device theorists, or computationalists. The course is intended to be accessible to students with a general, introductory background in semiconductors, such as that obtained by taking ECE-606: Solid State Physics at Purdue University.