|
Heterostructure
A heterojunction is an interface between two layers or regions of dissimilar semiconductors. These semiconducting materials have unequal band gaps as opposed to a homojunction. It is often advantageous to engineer the electronic energy bands in many solid-state device applications, including semiconductor lasers, solar cells and transistors. The combination of multiple heterojunctions together in a device is called a heterostructure, although the two terms are commonly used interchangeably. The requirement that each material be a semiconductor with unequal band gaps is somewhat loose, especially on small length scales, where electronic properties depend on spatial properties. A more modern definition of heterojunction is the interface between any two solid-state materials, including crystalline and amorphous structures of metallic, insulating, fast ion conductor and semiconducting materials. Manufacture and applications Heterojunction manufacturing generally requires the use o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Kroemer
Herbert Kroemer (; August 25, 1928 – March 8, 2024) was a German-American physicist who, along with Zhores Alferov, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for "developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics". Kroemer was professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, having received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1952 from the University of Göttingen, Germany, with a dissertation on hot electron effects in the then-new transistor. His research into transistors was a stepping stone to the later development of mobile phone technologies. Early life Born to a working-class family in Weimar, Germany, Kroemer excelled in physics at school, letting him advance faster than his peers in the subject. Career Kroemer worked in a number of research laboratories in Germany and the United States and taught electrical engineering at the University of Colorado from 1968 to 1976. He joined ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diode Laser
The laser diode chip removed and placed on the eye of a needle for scale A laser diode (LD, also injection laser diode or ILD or semiconductor laser or diode laser) is a semiconductor device similar to a light-emitting diode in which a diode pumped directly with electrical current can create lasing conditions at the diode's junction. Driven by voltage, the doped p–n-transition allows for recombination of an electron with a hole. Due to the drop of the electron from a higher energy level to a lower one, radiation is generated in the form of an emitted photon. This is spontaneous emission. Stimulated emission can be produced when the process is continued and further generates light with the same phase, coherence, and wavelength. The choice of the semiconductor material determines the wavelength of the emitted beam, which in today's laser diodes range from the infrared (IR) to the ultraviolet (UV) spectra. Laser diodes are the most common type of lasers produced, with a wide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Van Der Waals Heterostructures
A two-dimensional semiconductor (also known as 2D semiconductor) is a type of natural semiconductor with thicknesses on the atomic scale. Geim and Novoselov et al. initiated the field in 2004 when they reported a new semiconducting material graphene, a flat monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a 2D materials, 2D honeycomb lattice. A 2D monolayer semiconductor is significant because it exhibits stronger piezoelectric coupling than traditionally employed bulk forms. This coupling could enable applications. One research focus is on designing nanoelectronic components by the use of graphene as electrical conductor, hexagonal boron nitride as electrical insulator, and a transition metal dichalcogenide as semiconductor. Materials Graphene Graphene, consisting of single sheets of carbon atoms, has high electron mobility and high thermal conductivity. One issue regarding graphene is its lack of a band gap, which poses a problem in particular with digital electronics because it is unab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GaAs
Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a zinc blende crystal structure. Gallium arsenide is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, infrared light-emitting diodes, laser diodes, solar cells and optical windows. GaAs is often used as a substrate material for the epitaxial growth of other III-V semiconductors, including indium gallium arsenide, aluminum gallium arsenide and others. History Gallium arsenide was first synthesized and studied by Victor Goldschmidt in 1926 by passing arsenic vapors mixed with hydrogen over gallium(III) oxide at 600 °C. The semiconductor properties of GaAs and other III-V compounds were patented by Heinrich Welker at Siemens-Schuckert in 1951 and described in a 1952 publication. Commercial production of its monocrystals commenced in 1954, and more studies followed in the 1950s. First infrared LEDs were made in 1962. Preparatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Population Inversion
In physics, specifically statistical mechanics, a population inversion occurs when a system (such as a group of atoms or molecules) exists in a state in which more members of the system are in higher, excited states than in lower, unexcited energy states. It is called an "inversion" because in many familiar and commonly encountered physical systems in thermal equilibrium, this is not possible. This concept is of fundamental importance in laser science because the production of a population inversion is a necessary step in the workings of a standard laser. Boltzmann distributions and thermal equilibrium To understand the concept of a population inversion, it is necessary to understand some thermodynamics and the way that light interacts with matter. To do so, it is useful to consider a very simple assembly of atoms forming a laser medium. Assume there is a group of ''N'' atoms, each of which is capable of being in one of two energy states: either # The ''ground state'', with ene ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fiber Optic
An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data transfer rates) than electrical cables. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss and are immune to electromagnetic interference. Fibers are also used for illumination and imaging, and are often wrapped in bundles so they may be used to carry light into, or images out of confined spaces, as in the case of a fiberscope. Specially designed fibers are also used for a variety of other applications, such as fiber optic sensors and fiber lasers. Glass optical fibers are typically made by drawing, while plastic fibers can be made either by drawing or by extrusion. Optical fibers typically include a core surrounded by a transparent cladding material with a lower index ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Step-index Profile
For an optical fiber, a step-index profile is a refractive index profile characterized by a uniform refractive index within the core and a sharp decrease in refractive index at the core- cladding interface so that the cladding is of a lower refractive index. The step-index profile corresponds to a power-law index profile with the profile parameter approaching infinity. The step-index profile is used in most single-mode fibers and some multimode fibers. A step-index fiber is characterized by the core and cladding refractive indices ''n1'' and ''n2'' and the core and cladding radii a and b. Examples of standard core and cladding diameters 2a/2b are 8/125, 50/125, 62.5/125, 85/125, or 100/140 (units of μm). The fractional refractive-index change \triangle \, = \frac \ll \ 1. The value of n1 is typically between 1.44 and 1.46, and \triangle is typically between 0.001 and 0.02. Step-index optical fiber is generally made by doping high-purity fused silica glass (SiO2) with di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waveguide
A waveguide is a structure that guides waves by restricting the transmission of energy to one direction. Common types of waveguides include acoustic waveguides which direct sound, optical waveguides which direct light, and radio-frequency waveguides which direct electromagnetic waves other than light like radio waves. Without the physical constraint of a waveguide, waves would expand into three-dimensional space and their intensities would decrease according to the inverse square law. There are different types of waveguides for different types of waves. The original and most common meaning is a hollow conductive metal pipe used to carry high frequency radio waves, particularly microwaves. Dielectric waveguides are used at higher radio frequencies, and transparent dielectric waveguides and optical fibers serve as waveguides for light. In acoustics, air ducts and horns are used as waveguides for sound in musical instruments and loudspeakers, and specially-shaped metal rod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantum Well
A quantum well is a potential well with only discrete energy values. The classic model used to demonstrate a quantum well is to confine particles, which were initially free to move in three dimensions, to two dimensions, by forcing them to occupy a planar region. The effects of quantum confinement take place when the quantum well thickness becomes comparable to the de Broglie wavelength of the carriers (generally electrons and electron hole, holes), leading to energy levels called "energy subbands", i.e., the carriers can only have discrete energy values. The concept of quantum well was proposed in 1963 independently by Herbert Kroemer and by Zhores Alferov and R.F. Kazarinov.Zh. I. Alferov and R.F. Kazarinov, Authors Certificate 28448 (U.S.S.R) 1963. History The semiconductor quantum well was developed in 1970 by Leo Esaki, Esaki and Raphael Tsu, Tsu, who also invented synthetic superlattices. They suggested that a Heterojunction, heterostructure made up of alternating thin l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantum Size Effects
Mesoscopic physics is a subdiscipline of condensed matter physics that deals with materials of an intermediate size. These materials range in size between the nanoscale Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing propertie ... for a quantity of atoms (such as a molecule) and of materials measuring micrometres. The lower limit can also be defined as being the size of individual atoms. At the microscopic scale are bulk materials. Both mesoscopic and macroscopic scale, macroscopic objects contain many atoms. Whereas average properties derived from constituent materials describe macroscopic objects, as they usually obey the laws of classical mechanics, a mesoscopic object, by contrast, is affected by thermal fluctuations around the average, and its electronic behavior may require modeling at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Material Science
A material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their geological origin or biological function. Materials science is the study of materials, their properties and their applications. Raw materials can be processed in different ways to influence their properties, by purification, shaping or the introduction of other materials. New materials can be produced from raw materials by synthesis. In industry, materials are inputs to manufacturing processes to produce products or more complex materials, and the nature and quantity of materials used may form part of the calculation for the cost of a product or delivery under contract, such as where contract costs are calculated on a " time and materials" basis. Historical elements Materials chart the history of humanity. The system of the three prehist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Room Temperature
Room temperature, colloquially, denotes the range of air temperatures most people find comfortable indoors while dressed in typical clothing. Comfortable temperatures can be extended beyond this range depending on humidity, air circulation, and other factors. In certain fields, like science and engineering, and within a particular context, room temperature can mean different agreed-upon ranges. In contrast, ambient temperature is the actual temperature, as measured by a thermometer, of the air (or other medium and surroundings) in any particular place. The ambient temperature (e.g. an unheated room in winter) may be very different from an ideal ''room temperature''. Food and beverages may be served at "room temperature", meaning neither heated nor cooled. Comfort temperatures Comfort temperature is interchangeable with neutral temperature in the scientific literature, which can be calculated through regression analysis between thermal sensation votes and indoor temperature. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
