Assuming no prior knowledge of semiconductors, the book reviews major electrical and electronic concepts and examines in detail the PN junction diode, which is then used as a key to understanding all other modern semiconductor devices. Important processes and circuits are discussed throughout the book, with emphasis on commercially significant semiconductor products.
As the coverage is intended to be informative, not rigorous, the treatment keeps mathematics to an absolute minimum, stressing the basic physical mechanisms. Many illustrations are used to illuminate key semiconductor principles and mechanisms.
The purpose of the book is to help practicing engineers and technicians at all levels, QA personnel, and nontechnical managers gain a thorough understanding of the basic devices that make new semiconductor products possible. Consequently the book covers the fundamentals of all the major commercial diodes, including the zener, avalanche, P-i-N, varactor, Schottky, and even the special high-conductance diodes. It also explains the bipolar transistor as a simple extension of the diode theory and shows a novel way to evaluate output impedance under various circuit conditions. Additional material highlights the evolution of all the bipolar digital logic families, examines significant improvements, and describes the newer 12L designs.
But that's not all. The book also covers Junction Field-Effect Transistors (JFETs) and presents an easy-to-grasp approach to the rapidly evolving Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) transistor, which is the backbone of the current advances in semiconductor memories, calculators, and microprocessors. Finally, these new MOS products are discussed with major emphasis on the rapidly developing RAM and nonvolatile semiconductor ROM products.
The central idea of this book is to explain the basic semiconductor mechanisms that take place within solid-state integrated circuits in an easy-to-understand, intuitive way. This allows the reader to grasp the main ideas behind all the devices used in the new semiconductor products, from the many types of diodes to the bipolar transistors, the JFETs, the MOSFETS, and the developments in technologies for microprocessors and semiconductor memories. Semiconductor technology continues to move very fast; therefore, many new concepts and devices also have been briefly covered to provide a quick updating for the reader.
The explanations presented will aid both students, as a supplement to their texts, and many other people, who will find that this book assists them in attaining their desired level of understanding. The essentials of this book were presented by the author to a group of field-application engineers for semiconductor products. These people had worked with the application of ICs, and they were interested in learning more about the details of the inner workings. They were surprised to find that they could actually obtain a useful, intuitive understanding of the basic operation of a transistor from this short book. Far too many people, both inside and outside the electronics industry, find that they are using semiconductor products in their everyday lives and yet lack a basic understanding of how these products operate. This book will make these products understandable and, therefore, more "friendly."
To develop an intuitive understanding of semiconductors, we first establish a background for the solid state of matter in Chapter 1. For readers with a little knowledge in chemistry and the physics of solids, this will be a refresher in concepts already understood. We have extended this material to introduce the notions of an electric field and electric current. Crystals are introduced, and impurity doping of silicon is covered.
Chapter 2 builds on this physical framework and introduces the PN diode. All aspects of diode operation are covered, and many commercially significant diode mechanisms are explained.
Chapter 3 provides insight into bipolar transistor operation and discusses both small-signal characteristics and large-signal limitations. Some new ways to visualize and understand both the common-emitter connection (with both voltage and current drive) and the common-base connection are developed. These are used to provide an understanding of the output impedance for each of these connections. A simple model for the transistor is introduced and an example shows how this can predict the voltage gain of a single-stage amplifier.
Chapter 4 provides a short history of the evolution of transistor manufacturing techniques.
Chapter 5 shows how integrated circuits are built and introduces linear IC processes and both NPN and special PNP devices. The evolution of digital IC logic circuits is also highlighted, and the popular logic families are explained.
Chapter 6 provides insight into the junction field-effect transistor world. The basic operation of the JFET is covered along with the BiFETs, the new monolithic operational amplifiers. The high-frequency MOSFET is also described in this chapter.
Chapter 7, the largest of the chapters, is devoted to the present workhorse of the semiconductor industry, the metal-oxide semiconductors, the MOSFETs. The advances being made by semiconductor mem ory and microprocessor chips are shown to be a result of an evolution from the earlier PMOS products. A new intuitive introduction to the operation of the MOS field-effect transistor is provided that allows an easy understanding of this complex device. The CMOS, DMOS, VMOS, and new N-channel technologies are all discussed, and logic circuits are described.