In considering the plethora of textbooks on semiconductor devices, one cannot fail to use such well-known ones as Sze (Semiconductor Devices: Physics and Technology) and Streetman/Banerjee (Solid State Electronic Devices) as benchmarks. Indeed, Advanced Semiconducting Materials and Devices by Gupta and Gupta claims to cover a wider remit than such standard texts, and in doing so could fill a real niche.
After a short introduction, the basics of semiconductor theory are covered in much the same way as in other texts, moving on to simple devices such as the p–n junction and transistors. Following a short section on fabrication technologies, the later chapters are devoted to recent advances, special devices, and nanostructures. Unfortunately, these later chapters are rather weak and disordered, with short paragraphs and a few bullet points on each subject. These seem superfluous in the era of Internet search engines, where one could find a recent review in seconds. They are far too superficial and inadequately referenced to be of any real use. To take a rather extreme example, less than half a page is dedicated to semiconductor nanocrystals, the same amount of space that is given to light-emitting diodes on cricket stumps in the introduction.
This text also suffers from the sloppy use of language. In the introductory chapter, it is stated that atoms are indivisible in one sentence, and that they contain protons, neutrons, and electrons in the next. We are told silicon and germanium are “not useful” in their intrinsic form and semiconductors do not follow Ohm’s Law. There is an element of truth to each statement, of course: atoms do not usually divide in semiconductors (except in some novel radiation detectors); one generally dopes silicon and germanium in semiconductor devices to enhance their utility, and semiconductors do not follow Ohm’s Law under high fields. However, there is also radioactive decay that produces soft errors in modern devices, there are intrinsic detectors, and there is low field linearity in ohmic semiconductors.
The use of colloquial language throughout is also inappropriate. For example, metals have “too many” electrons, and silicon forms a “nice” gate material and has a “reasonable” bandgap. In the case of the latter, this is qualified as “not too high so that room temperature cannot ionize it, and not so low that it has a high leakage current.” This is plain wrong: the dopants in silicon are ionized at room temperature, not intrinsic carriers across the bandgap, as this would lead to high leakage currents.
The text includes some basic example questions, and there are many lists and tables of material properties and their applications.
The quality of some of the figures is very poor. They are clearly scanned from elsewhere without any acknowledgments. Several are hand drawn or scanned off blemished paper. Incredibly, in a text of almost 600 pages there is no index.
It is hard to see the purpose of such a text alongside the aforementioned texts. Both of them cover semiconductor materials and devices in far more depth and with very few errors.
Reviewer: Oliver Williamsis a Reader in Experimental Physics at Cardiff University, United Kingdom.
