Physics 5335 Announcement Page

Physics 5335 (Semiconductor Physics); Class Announcements & Calendar Items; 11:00-12:20pm, Tuesday & Thursday, Science Room 112. Revised 12/8/10.; NOTE!! The Phys. 5335 pages are Under Construction!; Usually, this page will be updated shortly after each class has finished. Please check this page at least two or three times a week!; The related course Physics 4309-5304 (Solid State Physics) will be offered again in Fall, 2011!; Dr. Myles' Future Teaching is discussed Here.; Course Syllabus. Fall, 2010 Aademic Calendar & Final Exam Schedule.
Correction to the Syllabus
An alert student has found a minor error in the syllabus. It was made in the calendar near the top of p. 3. A corrected syllabus has been posted
& can be found Here. Thnaks very much to the student who pointed this out to me!: Physics 5335 Homepage. Announcements Lectures Exams; Course Facebook Group Page. [The Facebook Group name is Texas Tech Physics 5335, The Physics of Semiconductors]

Abbreviations below are to chapters of books: BW = Semiconductor Physics & Applications by Balkanski & Wallis,; YC = Fundamentals of Semiconductors by Yu & Cardona, S = Semiconductor Physics by Seeger.

1. Student Presentations!!

In class, we agreed on two meetings for presentations: Fri., Dec. 10, 2-5pm & Tues., Dec. 14, 2-5pm. All presentations are in the Physics Conference Room (Science Room 103)!!

According to the sign-up sheet, here is the schedule for presentations:

Friday, December 10: 2:00-5:00 pm

2:00-2:30: Denis Myasishchev, "Thermal Conductivity of Si Nanowires"

2:30-3:00: Mehmet Bebek, "Hopping Conduction in Amorphous Semiconductors"

3:00-3:30: Gulten Karaoglan, "Semiconductor Lasers"

3:30-4:00: Brittany Baker, "Shallow to Deep Level Instability in Oxides"

4:00-4:30: Byungkyun Kang, "Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors"

4:30-5:00: Fernando Monjaraz, ?????

Tuesday, December 14: 2:00-5:00 pm

2:00-2:30: Cameron Hettler, "Semiconductor UV Light Sources"

2:30-3:00: William Sullivan, "Impact Ionization and Electrical Breakdown in Silicon Carbide"

3:00-3:30: Sandeep Sohal, "Optical Properties of Semiconductor Nanocrystals"

3:30-4:00: Tom Halverson, "Semiconductor Properties of Buckballs"

4:00-4:30: Craig Higgins, "Themal Conductivtiy in Solar Cells"

4:30-5:00: Rick Mengyan, "Energy Levels in Semiconductors with Muon Spin Resonance"

I again stress that it is common courtesy that, if possible, EVERYONE makes every effort to attend every talk!!! Showing up only for your talk & for no one else's is disrespecful to your fellow students & to me. Similarly, out of courtesy to everyone, please arrive in the room EARLY (BEFORE the session begins) & set up your presentation on the computer (yours or the one I'll supply) to make sure that everthing works correctly with the projector & that your talk is formatted correctly. Please DO NOT waste the time of your fellow students & me by spending many minutes of your time slot trying get your presentation to work properly!! Doing this, instead of arriving early & checking this all out beforehand is disrespectful to everyone there!! Thank you!!!

2. Research Papers!! These are Due at 5 PM, Wednesday, December 15!! NO EXCEPTIONS!!

3. Final Homework!! All Homework may be found Here.

REMINDER: The following Homework assignments are still pending:

Homework #6 (on Transport).

Extra Credit Homework #7 (on Optical Properties).

Extra Credit Numerical Homework (on Deep Levels)

Each of these is Due at 5PM, Wednesday, December 15!!! NO EXCEPTIONS!!

4. We finished discussing:

A. Introduction to Semiconductors. Lectures. Material on this is BW, Ch. 1, "Basic Characteristics of Semiconductors". Homework #1 is Here. This is a survey of semiconductor properties & characteristics. Much of the discussion is qualitative, not quantitative. Some discussion on this also comes from YC, Ch. 1, "Introduction", and S, Ch. 1, "Elementary Properties of Semiconductors". Note: Lectures with more detailed treatments of cyrstal structures & reciprocal lattices are in those for Physics 5304, Solid State Physics. These are Here.

B. Electronic Bandstructures.Lectures. Material on this is BW, Ch.2, "Electronic Energy Bands: Basic Theory" & BW, Ch.3, "Electronic Energy Bands: Semiconductors". Some also came from YC, Ch. 2,

"Electronic Bandstructures", & S, Ch. 2, "Energy Bandstructure". Homework #2 is Here.Electronic bandstructure theory applies to any crystalline solid. It is highly quantum mechanical & complicated. Much material in the texts & contains many details. Those are only relevant if you will do theory. Rather than go through that in detail, I left many details to your reading & focussed on the PHYSICS of bandstructures. Most of the discussion was aimed at these questions: a. Why, physically, are there bands & gaps? b. What causes them? Applications to some common semiconductor materials were discussed. After this discussion, my goals were that you should be able to 1. Understand the physics behind the existence of bands & gaps. 2. Understand themeaning of a bandstructure diagram & be able to interpret & its main features. 3. Give an overview of modern methods for calculating energy bands & have general ideas about how calcualtions are done. 4. Be able to calculate energy bands for some simple model crystalline solids.

C. Electronic Properties of Impurities & Defects. Lectures. Homework #3 is Here. Some of this discussion came from BW, Ch. 5, "Electronic Effects of Impurities" and some material came from YC, Ch. 4, "Electronic Properties of Defects". Near the end, I used some of my old research notes & also some papers I published (with students & collaborators) in the 1980's & 1990's. NOTE: There is also a BONUS Homework Assignment on Deep Levels that is a numerical problem. It is Here. It is due Wednesday, December 8, which is the last class day of the semester.

D. Lattice Vibrational Properites of Semiconductors. Lectures. Homework #4 is Here. Material on this is BW, Ch.7, "Lattice Vibrations in Semiconductors." Some material also came from YC, Ch. 3, "Vibrational Properties of Semiconductors and Electron-Phonon Interaction". Most of this applies to any cyrstalline solid, not just semiconductors. So, the same ideas are also found in any introductory undergraduate solid state physics book. For example, in the book by Charles Kittel (8th Edition) it is in Chs. 4 & 5.

E. Electron & Hole Statistics. Lectures. Homework #5 is Here. Material on this is BW, Ch. 6, "Semiconductor Statistics" & S, Ch. 3, "Semiconductor Statistics."

F. Electronic Transport & Conduction. Lectures. Homework #6 is Here. Material on this is BW Chs. 4 & 8, "Kinetics & Dynamics of Electrons & Holes". Some material also came from YC, Ch. 5, "Electrical Transport" & S Chs. 4 - 9 "Charge & Energy Transport."

G. Optical Properties. Lectures. Homework #7 is Here. Material on this is BW, Ch. 10, "Optical Properties of Semiconductors." Some material was also from YC Chs. 6-8 & S Chs. 11-13.

H. Quantum Confinement. Lectures. We had only a quick overview of this. Some material on this is in BW, Chs. 15-18 & also from YC Ch. 9 & S Chs. 9 & 14.

I. "Hot Topics". Lectures. Topics discussed were Molecular Electronics & Photonic Crystals. These aren't in any textbook, that I know of!

5. Facebook Group: Our Facebook Group is Texas Tech Physics 5335, The Physics of Semiconductors. Group Link. I've not followed through with my idea to post announcements of class interest on the Group Wall. Sorry! From now on, I will try to do this from time to time.

6. Textbooks: Primary: Semiconductor Physics & Applications, by M. Balkans Supplements: ku & R.F. Wallis (Oxford U. Pressl, 2000). Both hardback & paperback are available. Book webpage. Webpage with results (1,660 hits!) from a Google search on the title & authors.1. Fundamentals of Semiconductor Physics, by P.Y. Yu & M. Cardona (Springer-Verlag). 2. Semiconductor Physics, by K. Seeger (Springer-Verlag).

7. Email Distribution List: All of you are on my distribution list. Thanks! I'll probably send 1 or 2 messages/week. Sometimes these will be long, but they contain important information, so please read all of each of them. This will prevent me from having to answer numerous questions about the topics discussed in these notes. Thanks! If you know you're on my list & you aren't receiving my messages, some reasons for this are discussed Here!! Please be sure that I have your correct email address, that you tell me if it changes, and that you check your email DAILY!!

8. ATTENDANCE: The weekend DOESN'T start Thursday! I don't take roll & have no specific attendance policy. But, isn't it obvious that (unless you're a genius!) attendance is REQUIRED to get a good grade (or to LEARN SOMETHING!)? There is a correlation between class attendance & grades.

Miscellaneous Topics

1. Dr. Myles: Do you want to know more about him (education, experience, research, personal, etc.)? See his Homepage & Research Page.

A page about his Future Teaching is Here.

2. Physics Contributions of 20^thCentury Women! Did you ever wonder why there aren't more women physicists?

Actually, a number of women made very important contributions to many areas of physics in the 1900's.

Here is a website which discusses this in detail!

3. Semiconductor Physics Pioneers Web Pages:

Nobel Prize in Physics, 1956 for the invention of the transistor!

a. John Bardeen, Bardeen Tribute

b. Walter Brattain, Brattain Tribute

c. William Shockley, Shockley Tribute , Shockley Wierdness

4. Click Here for a link to semiconductor physics java applets.

These are interactive animations which can teach you some basics about semiconductor physics.

5. Click Here for a link to the "Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics" (no kidding!).

6. Physics News: a. Physics Central (for the public). b. Focus News (advanced level) from the APS.

8. Click Here to see the Top 10 most influential people of the last 1000 years. 4 of them made contributions to physics!

(Borrowed from Dr. Tom Gibson!).

9. Click Here to see that Physics can be Fun!

Science Humor

In class, I mentioned a humorous journal & some silly prizes. The following links will tell you more. The journal is the Journal of Improbable Researcch & the prizes are the Ig Nobel Prizes. Note: The 2010 Ig Nobel Prizes will be awarded in a ceremony at Harvard U., Thurs., Sept. 30 at 7:00pm. There are only a few tickets still available, so you might want to consider attending!!?? The 2010 winners won't be announced until the ceremony. Looking at the research of some selected 2009 winners may give you the flavor of this:

PHYSICS

Katherine Whitcome, U. of Cincinnati, Daniel Lieberman, Harvard, Liza Shapiro, U. of Texas, for analytically determining why pregnant women don't tip over.

REFERENCE: "Fetal Load and the Evolution of Lumbar Lordosis in Bipedal Hominins," Nature, 450, 1075-1078, (2007).

CHEMISTRY

Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, Victor Castaño, U. Nacional Autónoma de México, for creating diamonds from liquid-specifically from tequila.

REFERENCE: "Growth of Diamond Films from Tequila," Reviews on Advanced Materials Science, vol. 22, no. 1, 2009, pp. 134-8.

PEACE

Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali, Beat Kneubuehl, U. of Bern, Switzerland, for determining, by experiment, whether it is

better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.

REFERENCE: "Are Full or Empty Beer Bottles Sturdier and Does Their Fracture-Threshold Suffice to Break the Human Skull?"

Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, vol. 16, no. 3, April 2009, pp. 138-42.

MEDICINE

Donald Unger, of Thousand Oaks, CA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand

- but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand - every day for more than sixty (60) years.

REFERENCE: "Does Knuckle Cracking Lead to Arthritis of the Fingers?", Arthritis and Rheumatism, vol. 41, no. 5, 1998, pp. 949-50.

2005 was the WORLD YEAR OF PHYSICS & marked 100 years since Albert Einstein published 3 pioneering papers (Relativity, Brownian Motion, Photoelectric Effect), which changed physics forever & are considered the beginning of "modern" physics! The United Nations, the US Congress, & the governments & scientific societies of many countries endorsed it. For more information, click the image on the left. The WORLD YEAR OF PHYSICS 2005 marked 100 years since Albert Einstein published 3 pioneering papers (Relativity, Brownian Motion, Photoelectric Effect), which changed physics forever & are considered the beginning of "modern" physics! The United Nations, the US Congress, & the governments & scientific societies of many countries endorsed it. For more information, click the image on the left.

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