Springer Handbook of Semiconductor Devices

No other class of materials than semiconductors, since the early identification of their electrical,
optical, and thermal properties at the beginning of the nineteenth century, has been so deeply
investigated and used to design all kinds of devices. The first theoretical models about the
physics of semiconductors, based on quantum-mechanical grounds, fueled the design of solidstate
diodes and transistors; these, in turn, have opened new horizons to electronics, computer
science, and sensors, and have greatly impacted the global market with annual revenues of the
order of 500 billion US dollars in the present days.
In turn, semiconductor companies pushed ahead the search of new semiconductor materials
and structures suited for specific applications, and urged academia and the industry’s R&D
toward the elaboration of more and more powerful simulation tools to inquire about the
effects of miniaturization, interfaces, and doping on device performance and reliability, or
to benchmark specific semiconductor properties before investing resources in expensive
innovations of the production lines.
All the above justify the effort of putting together, in this Springer Handbook of Semiconductor
Devices, many cross-disciplinary competences about present-day and near-future
semiconductor devices, namely modern concepts in solid-state physics, material science,
growth and process technology, device design, and advanced simulation strategies.
When we speak about semiconductor devices, what we consider “future” is very often
already “present time” somewhere in the world. Thus, this handbook not only includes the most
recent progress in research and technology of conventional semiconductor devices and sensors
but enlarges its view to include some specific topics related to new materials and designs,
presently at the frontier between science and technology, nonetheless suitable to be employed
in the next-generation semiconductor-technology challenges.
The handbook is organized in four parts: 1. Technological Aspects; 2. Basic Devices and
Applications; 3. New-Generation Devices and Architectures; 4 Modeling. Almost 100 leading
scientists from both academia and industry were invited to contribute to the 45 chapters of the
handbook, which has been conceived for professionals and practitioners, material scientists,
physicists, and electrical engineers working at universities, industrial R&D, and production.
Each chapter is self-contained and refers to related topics treated in other chapters when
necessary, so that the reader interested in a specific subject can easily identify a personal path
through the massive contents of the handbook.
We are very grateful to all the authors who joined this ambitious enterprise, to the referees
who generously contributed to improve the quality of the final outcome, to Springer’s editors
who patiently followed ourwork step by step, and, last but not least, to Prof. Chihiro Hamaguchi
(Osaka University) and Prof. Herman Maes (KU Leuven and imec) for providing forewords
based on their long-term experience in the field of semiconductor science and technology.