Reading, April 8

I know there are a lot of posts here. I hope and expect that you will read all of them, and that you will take responsibility for understanding and responding to their content as needed. If you are accepting of this approach (and not longing for a single syllabus in which every reading assignment and homework is pre-established) I think you will find it beneficial.

For the near future, please read chapter 5, or other material related to equilibrium conditions for p-n junctions. Later we will come back to chapter 4, which discusses "excess carriers", e.g., photon induced carriers in semiconductors. That is really interesting and we expect to cover it in some depth later in the quarter.

Currently our focus is on equilibrium carrier concentration. We are moving from exploring equilibrium carrier concentration in homogeneous semiconductors (what we did last class) toward equilibrium carrier concentration in an inhomogeneous semiconductor. That means a semiconductor where different parts are doped differently and includes the iconic p-n junction.