ECE 845: Transport in Semiconductor Devices

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ECE 845 - Transport in Semiconductor Devices

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ECE 845: Transport in Semiconductor Devices, Fall 2004 (Knezevic), formerly Course Homepage of Knezevic

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Catalog Description

845 Transport in Semiconductor Devices. II, Even Yrs; 3 cr. Transport of carriers in electronic devices, starting from the Boltzmann equation and the quantum mechanical treatment of scattering, and covering applications to devices; transport in 2D structures; modeling of transport; experiments and devices involving hot electrons. P: ECE 745.

Course Prerequisite(s)

See catalog description above.

Prerequisite knowledge and/or skills

ECE 745 or consent of instructor. NOTE: Course is presently offered in the Spring semester of ODD YEARS.
Knowledge of fundamentals of quantum mechanics, and a familiarity with semiconductor bandstructure and semiconductor transport is recommended.

Textbook(s) and/or other required material

Recommended:

- M. Lundstrom, "Fundamentals of Carrier Transport"

- D. K. Ferry and S. M. Goodnick, "Transport in Nanostructures"

- S. Datta, "Electronic Transport in Mesoscopic Systems"

- J. H. Davies, "The Physics of Low-Dimensional Semiconductors"

Extensive use of current research literature.

Course objectives

Understand the rich physics of electron transport in modern semiconductor structures, in a wide area of operating temperatures (from milli-Kelvin to room temperature), in both 3D and low-dimensional structures (conventional FET devices, heterostructures, quantum wires, quantum dots and single-electron transistors, resonant structures). Become proficient in some of the modern semiconductor modeling techniques (e.g., bulk ensemble Monte Carlo and Usuki mode matching.) Also, another goal is to give students some practice in technical writing and giving technical oral presentations.

Topics covered

NOTE: Course is presently offered in the Spring semester of ODD YEARS.

1) Semiclassical transport: Boltzmann equation revisited; Ensemble Monte Carlo solution to the Boltzmann equation; High field transport: hot carriers, nonequilibrium phonons

2) Transport in nanostructures: Two-dimensional electron gas (density of states, Landau levels) ; One-dimensional systems (quantum wires, quantum-point contacts and conductance quantization); Zero-dimensional systems (quantum dots; single-electron transistor); Decoherence in nanostructures

3) Quantum transport: Many-body effects, Green's functions, density matrices

For more on topics covered, see the ECE 845 eCOW webpage.

Assessment of student progress toward course objectives

Students' progress towards the course objectives will be assessed based on homework (homework assignments are mini-projects), and possibly a take-home midterm and final. Also, on Friday of every week, two students at a time will each give a 20-min Power Point presentation on an assigned topic, usually from current research literature. Many assignments will require use of a computer, and some proficiency in programming is recommended. Students should feel free to use any software package or programming language to solve the homework problems.

Person(s) who prepared this description

Irena Knezevic

Copyright 2007 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Date last modified: 26-Nov-2007
Content by: ece@engr.wisc.edu
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