Solid State Electronic Devices, 7th Edition

3.3 Carrier Concentrations

In calculating semiconductor electrical properties and analyzing device behavior, it is often necessary to know the number of charge carriers per cm³ in the material. The majority carrier concentration is usually obvious in heavily doped material, since one majority carrier is obtained for each impurity atom (for the standard doping impurities). The concentration of minority carriers is not obvious, however, nor is the temperature dependence of the carrier concentrations.

To obtain equations for the carrier concentrations we must investigate the distribution of carriers over the available energy states. This type of distribution is not difficult to calculate, but the derivation requires some background in statistical ...