ELEG240 Knowledge Outcomes

“Introduction to semiconductor devices, electromagnetic fields and waves, and optics.Covers basic electronic devices, including diodes, transistors, lasers, antennas, and optical elements.”

UDel course catalog.

• The microscopic basis of Ohm’s Law, and how to calculate resistance from microscopic parameters.
• The four equations that govern all electrical and magnetic phenomena (Maxwell’s equations).
• How Maxwell’s equations predict electromagnetic waves, which are light, and how to calculate the velocity of light from electrical parameters of materials.
• Why light bends when it enters a material, and how to calculate the degree of bending.
• Why blue light bends more than red light when it enters glass, which is the basis for the breakup of light by a prism.
• Why and at roughly what wavelengths materials absorb light.
• The concept that materials can have optical gain, or amplify light as it passes through them.
• How when an optical gain material is placed between two partial mirrors, that is a laser.
• How oscillating currents are converted into electromagnetic waves, or how antennas work.
• How electromagnetic waves can interfere, resulting in devices such as the phased array steerable antenna, and the diffraction grating.
• The concept of a photon or that light can behave as a particle.
• The concept that electrons can act as waves, the basis of quantum mechanics.
• How the wave nature of electrons causes them to exist at high energy in a metal, or other solids, even at absolute zero temperature, and the concept of a distribution of electron energy in a solid (the Fermi-Dirac function).
• Rules for the formation of non-metallic solid compounds and crystals based upon their number of valence electrons, or group number.
• How the wave nature of electrons in crystals causes the existence of gaps in energy over which electrons cannot exist (the band gap).
• Why pure crystalline solids, such as silicon, cannot conduct (the concept of filled and empty energy bands).
• How by doping crystalline solids, we may engineer the level and type (positive or negative charge) of conductivity in such semiconductors, which is the basis for all electronic devices.
• The function and construction of diodes, which conduct for one polarity but not the other, and the equation which governs current flow in a diode.
• The optical properties of diodes: photodetection, solar cells, and light emitting diodes.
• The function and construction of bipolar and metal-oxide-semiconductor transistors, and the equations which govern current flow in them.