Semiconductors: Bonds and Bands

As we settle into this second decade of the twenty-first century it is evident that the advances in micro-electronics have truly revolutionized our day-to-day lifestyle. The growth of microelectronics itself has been driven, and in turn is calibrated by, the growth in density of transistors on a single integrated circuit, a growth that has come to be known as Moore's Law. Considering that the first transistor appeared only at the middle of the last century, it is remarkable that billions of transistors can now appear on a single chip. The technology is built upon semiconductors, materials in which the band gap has been engineered for special values suitable to the particular application. This book, written specifically for a one semester course for graduate students, provides a thorough understanding of the key solid state physics of semiconductors and prepares readers for further advanced study, research and development work in semiconductor materials and applications. The book describes how quantum mechanics gives semiconductors unique properties that enabled the microelectronics revolution, and sustain the ever-growing importance of this revolution. Including chapters on electronic structure, lattice dynamics, electron-phonon interactions and carrier transport in also discusses theoretical methods for computation of band structure, phonon spectra, the electron-phonon interaction and transport of carriers

Table of Contents:
1 Introduction 1.1 What is included in device modeling? 1.2 What is in this book? References 2 Electronic Structure 2.1 Periodic Potentials 2.1.1 Bloch Functions 2.2 Potentials and Pseudopotentials 2.3 Real-Space Methods 2.4 Momentum Space Methods 2.5 The k-p Method 2.6 The Effective Mass Approximation 2.7 Semiconductor Alloys References 3 Lattice Dynamics 3.1 Lattice Waves and Phonons 3.2 Waves in Deformable Solids 3.3 Lattice Contribution to the Dielectric Function 3.4 Models for Calculating Phonon Dynamics 3.5 Anharmoic Forces and the Phonon Lifetime References 4 The Electron-Phonon Interaction 4.1 The Basic Interaction 4.2 Acoustic Deformation Potential Scattering 4.3 Piezoelectric Scattering 4.4 Optical and Intervalley Scattering 4.5 Polar Optical Phonon Scattering 4.6 Other Scattering Processes References 5 Carrier Transport 5.1 The Boltzmann Transport Equation 5.2 The Ensemble Monte Carlo Technique

About the Author :
David K Ferry is Regents' Professor in the School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, at Arizona State University. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Texas, Austin, and was the recipient of the 1999 Cledo Brunetti Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for his contributions to nanoelectronics. He is the author, or co-author, of numerous scientific articles and more than a dozen books.

Review :
This book is clearly the product of an author with great experience and wide knowledge of the field. This volume is well tailored to its intended audience and offers much more than simply clipping a few chapters out of a book on solid state physics. A. H. Harker 2015 Contemporary Physics, Taylor & Francis