Course offered in:

Autumn 2016

Instructor:

Souvik Mahapatra

Motivation:

This course aims to make you understand the physics behind the workings of PN, BJT, MOSFET, and FET. These are the devices that build up all the cool gadgets that we are surrounded by. This course is important because it introduces those fundamental devices whose knowledge is essential to understand the working of any electronic circuit.

Course Content:

Following mentioned topics nearly covers the entire course:

  1. Basics of semiconductors

  2. Energy band diagrams and effective mass

  3. Density of states, concentration of electrons and holes, current

  4. Generation and recombination process

  5. PN junction diode

  6. Breakdown in PN junction diode

  7. Bipolar junction transistor (BJT)

  8. Small signal model of BJT

  9. MOS capacitor

  10. High-frequency and low-frequency CV characteristics of MOS capacitor

  11. Effect of different non-idealities on capacitance of MOS capacitor

  12. Current conduction in MOS system

  13. MOSFET

  14. CMOS logic gates

Feedback on Lectures:

It is really important that you know what is going on in course otherwise it would get really difficult during exams. It is difficult just to understand from slides because slides generally contain mathematical stuff and there is a lot of theory behind it. Taking notes in lectures was really useful as you have to be aware of the assumption taken and physics behind it.

Feedback on assignments, quizzes and exams:

Prof. had given ungraded assignments throughout the course. There were two quizzes each of 15 marks and Midsem of 30 marks and Endsem was of 100 marks which were den scaled down to 40 marks. Endsem had a question of 78 marks, on a single topic and all its sub parts were linked so only those who learnt that topic well could score more. The question asked were based on things taught in class and given in assignments. Tutorials were taken regularly.

Prerequisites:

There are no hard prerequisites for this course.

Difficulty:

The course was moderately difficult.

Grading Statistics:

The grading was not on the lenient side. As you can refer to ASC only 9 AA’s and AB’s were given.

Reference Books:

Presentations were regularly uploaded.

The following are reference books for this course:

  1. B.G. Streetman, Solid State Electronic Devices, Prentice Hall of India, New Delhi, 1995

  2. D. A. Neamen, Semiconductor Physics and Devices (IRWIN), Times Mirror High Education Group, Chicago)1997

  3. Robert F. Pierret, Semiconductor Device Fundamentals, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

Reviewed by Shrey Bajaj(shrey5bajaj@gmail.com)