CE Purdue Semiconductor Fundamentals L4.1: Carrier Transport - Landauer Approach

Table of Contents available below.


This video is part of the course "Semiconductor Fundamentals" taught by Mark Lundstrom at Purdue University. The course can be found on nanoHUB.org at https://nanohub.org/courses/sfun or on edX at https://www.edx.org/course/semiconduc... .

This course provides the essential foundations required to understand the operation of semiconductor devices such as transistors, diodes, solar cells, light-emitting devices, and more. The material will primarily appeal to electrical engineering students whose interests are in applications of semiconductor devices in circuits and systems. The treatment is physical and intuitive, and not heavily mathematical.


Technology users will gain an understanding of the semiconductor physics that is the basis for devices. Semiconductor technology developers may find it a useful starting point for diving deeper into condensed matter physics, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and materials science. The course presents an electrical engineering perspective on semiconductors, but those in other fields may find it a useful introduction to the approach that has guided the development of semiconductor technology for the past 50+ years.


Table of Contents:
00:00 Lecture 4.1: The Current Equation
00:35 What causes a current?
00:51 What causes water to flow?
01:11 What causes water to flow?
01:35 What causes water to flow?
01:58 What causes water to flow?
02:12 Connection to the outside
02:48 Electron transport
03:30 Current in a nano device
04:09 Current in a nano device
04:19 Current in a nano device
05:15 Answer: The current equation
06:35 What is transmission?
07:40 Transmission and mean-free-path
09:31 Transmission
10:56 What is a channel?
11:23 Channels are like lanes on a highway
12:37 "Fermi window"
13:05 How current flows (T = 0 K)
15:22 What causes a current?
15:39 Fermi window under small bias
17:36 Voltage and electron energy
18:23 Fermi window: small bias
20:10 Current for a small voltage difference
20:51 Small bias conductance
21:14 Current in a bulk semiconductor
22:18 Current equation in the bulk
23:25 Current equation in the bulk
24:41 The quasi-Fermi level or electrochemical potential
26:10 Summary