Peter YU – författare

This third updated edition of Fundamentals of Semiconductors attempts to fill the gap between a general solid-state physics textbook and research articles by providing detailed explanations of the electronic, vibrational, transport, and optical properties of semiconductors. The approach is physical and intuitive rather than formal and pedantic. Theories are presented to explain experimental results. This textbook has been written with both students and researchers in mind. Its emphasis is on understanding the physical properties of Si and similar tetrahedrally coordinated semiconductors. The explanations are based on physical insights. Each chapter is enriched by an extensive collection of tables of material parameters, figures, and problems. Many of these problems "lead the student by the hand" to arrive at the results.

Since the appearance of our book, Fundamentals of Semiconductors: Physics and Materials Properties, one of the questions we are asked most frequently is this: “is there a solution manual to this book?” In preparing the questions at the end of each chapter we have already tried to guide the readers to derive the answers by themselves using a step-by-step approach. Clearly this strategy did not work for everyone. We recognize that many of the questions in this book are quite challenging and often require reading of research papers to solve them. In response to readers demand we have - cided to provide solutions to some of the problems in this new edition. Since working through problems is an important and necessary part of the learning process in physics we will not give the solutions to all the problems. Instead, we hope to use the solutions to a number of selected problems in each ch- ter as an additional study help to the readers. We like to use these solutions to provide more in depth discussions to topics which may be too specialized for a typical course on semiconductor physics. By leaving enough unsolved problems and adding a few new ones there are still plenty of opportunities for both the instructors to choose problems for assignments and for students to test their understanding of the text.

Since the appearance of our book, Fundamentals of Semiconductors: Physics and Materials Properties, one of the questions we are asked most frequently is this: “is there a solution manual to this book?” In preparing the questions at the end of each chapter we have already tried to guide the readers to derive the answers by themselves using a step-by-step approach. Clearly this strategy did not work for everyone. We recognize that many of the questions in this book are quite challenging and often require reading of research papers to solve them. In response to readers demand we have - cided to provide solutions to some of the problems in this new edition. Since working through problems is an important and necessary part of the learning process in physics we will not give the solutions to all the problems. Instead, we hope to use the solutions to a number of selected problems in each ch- ter as an additional study help to the readers. We like to use these solutions to provide more in depth discussions to topics which may be too specialized for a typical course on semiconductor physics. By leaving enough unsolved problems and adding a few new ones there are still plenty of opportunities for both the instructors to choose problems for assignments and for students to test their understanding of the text.

Fundamentals of Semiconductors attempts to fill the gap between a general solid-state physics textbook and research articles by providing detailed explanations of the electronic, vibrational, transport, and optical properties of semiconductors. The approach is physical and intuitive rather than formal and pedantic. Theories are presented to explain experimental results. This textbook has been written with both students and researchers in mind. Its emphasis is on understanding the physical properties of Si and similar tetrahedrally coordinated semiconductors. The explanations are based on physical insights. Each chapter is enriched by an extensive collection of tables of material parameters, figures and problems. Many of these problems ''lead the student by the hand'' to arrive at the results.

We have so far received many comments and feedback on our book from all quarters including students, instructors and, of course, many friends. We are most grateful to them not only for their compliments but also for their valu­ able criticism. We also received many requests for an instructor manual and solutions to the problems at the end of each chapter. We realize that semicon­ ductor physics has continued to evolve since the publication of this book and there is a need to continue to update its content. To keep our readers informed of the latest developments we have created a Web Page for this book. Its ad­ dress (as of the writing of this preface) is: http://pauline.berkeley.edultextbook. At this point this Web Page displays the following information: 1) Content, outline and an excerpt of the book. 2) Reviews of the book in various magazines and journals. 3) Errata to both first and second printing (most have been corrected in the second edition as of this date). 4) Solutions to selected problems. 5) Additional supplementary problems.