Book Description

This is the first book to describe thoroughly the many facets of doping in compound semiconductors. Equal emphasis is given to the fundamental materials physics and to the technological aspects of doping. The author describes various doping techniques, including doping during epitaxial growth, doping by implantation, and doping by diffusion. The key characteristics of all dopants that have been employed in III-V semiconductors are discussed. In addition, general characteristics of dopants are analyzed, including the electrical activity, saturation, amphotericity, autocompensation, and maximum attainable dopant concentration. Redistribution effects are important in semiconductor microstructures. Linear and non-linear diffusion, different microscopic diffusion mechanisms, surface segregation, surface drift, surface migration, impurity-induced disordering, and the respective physical driving mechanisms are illustrated. Topics related to basic impurity theory include the hydrogenic model for shallow impurities, linear screening, density of states, classical and quantum statistics, the law of mass action, as well as many analytic approximations for the Fermi-Dirac integral for three-, two- and one dimensional systems. The timely topic of highly doped semiconductors, including band tails, impurity bands, bandgap renormalization, the Mott transition, and the Burstein-Moss shift, is discussed as well. Doping is essential in many semiconductor heterostructures including high-mobility selectively doped heterostructures, quantum well and quantum barrier structures, doping superlattice structures and d-doping structures. Technologically important deep levels are summarized, including Fe, Cr, and the DX-center, the EL2 defect, and rare-earth impurities. The properties of deep levels are presented phenomenologically, including emission, capture, Shockley-Read recombination, the Poole-Frenkel effect, lattice relaxation, and other effects. The final chapter is dedicated to the experimental characterization of impurities. This book will be of interest to graduate students, researchers and development engineers in the fields of electrical engineering, materials science, physics, and chemistry working on semiconductors. The book may also be used as a text for graduate courses in electrical engineering and materials science.