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Module

PHY3026 : Electronic Devices

  • Offered for Year: 2020/21
  • Module Leader(s): Professor Anthony O'Neill
  • Owning School: Mathematics, Statistics and Physics
  • Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus
Semesters
Semester 1 Credit Value: 10
ECTS Credits: 5.0

Aims

To provide to specialist knowledge of electronic devices. To enable students to have a better
understanding of state-of-the-art devices (e.g. transistors). To enable students to compare competing
electronic technologies.

Outline Of Syllabus

Introduction to electronic devices. Electronic system exemplar: smartphone. Review of
semiconductor properties, sheet resistance.

Junctions. Metal-semiconductor junction, Schottky contact, Ohmic contact. p-n junction, LED,
photodiode, Smartphone: camera, optical and electromechanical sensors.

MOS Junction, MOS electrostatics, depletion accumulation and inversion, MOS C-V curve.

MOSFET mode of operation, I-V characteristic, delay time, sub-threshold, transistor and IC cross
sections.

CMOS: Short channel effects, impact of scaling of electrical characteristics, threshold Voltage,
DIBL, scaling strategies, limits to scaling.

Carrier transport, transconductance degradation, mobility, velocity-field, universal mobility, field
dependence.

MOSFET Evolution, STI and LOCOS isolation, metal and polysilicon gates, LDD, parasitics, halo
doping, retrograde doping, strained Si, High-k dielectrics, physical and economic scale/complexity of
semiconductor devices, evolution, ITRS.

Bipolar Transistor, dc characteristic, Early effect, Gummel plot, Bipolar evolution, heterojunction
bipolar (HBT).

III-V compound semiconductors, properties of silicon versus other semiconductors, MESFET,
mode of operation, I-V characteristic, heterojunctions, MODFETs, I-V characteristic
Displays, OLED, touchscreen, digitizer (smartphone)

Teaching Methods

Module leaders are revising this content in light of the Covid 19 restrictions.
Revised and approved detail information will be available by 17 August.

Assessment Methods

Module leaders are revising this content in light of the Covid 19 restrictions.
Revised and approved detail information will be available by 17 August.

Reading Lists

Timetable