Physical Chemistry of Semiconductor Materials and Processes

Book Preface

Physical chemistry today plays a critical role in our basic understanding, modelling, diagnostics and theoretical forecast of semiconductor materials’ properties, albeit some of Lucretius’s concepts remain alive, such as the concept of vacuum/vacancies (materia inane) in solid materials.

Their mechanical, electrical and optical properties depend not only on their structure and composition, but also on their defects and impurities content and on their deviations from stoichiometry, when compound semiconductors are considered. We have learned how to manage their properties by doping and defect engineering processes. Physical chemistry is behind most of these processes and is crucial in the growth, purification and post-growth treatments of semiconductors, such as impurity gettering and passivation. In this respect, this book represents the first attempt to treat semiconductor materials and processes from a purely physico-chemical viewpoint.

This subject is treated at a tutorial level, for students and specialists having a background knowledge in solid-state physics. For this reason the book starts with some elementary thermodynamic concepts, then continues by dealing with issues concerning point and extended defects in elemental and compound semiconductors, having in mind the thermodynamics and kinetics at the base of their behaviour. The physico-chemical aspects of growth-and post-growth processes of semiconductor materials are the final issues considered, giving substantial attention to the majority of semiconductors of industrial interest, but also to semiconductor nanowires and thin film semiconductors for photovoltaic and optoelectronic applications.

This book is dedicated to Professor Giovanni (Nanni) Giacometti, Academician, who stimulated in me a strong interest for the physico-chemical aspects of material science when he was my teacher, and who became a colleague and a close friend in the subsequent years.

This book is dedicated also to the hundreds of masters and doctoral degree students whom I taught, while not having the time to write a book for them.

I express my gratitude to a number of friends and colleagues worldwide who have supported my work during the preparation of this book with advice and delivery of material. Among them, my particular gratitude goes to Stefan Estreicher, Ichiro Yonenaga, Koichi Kakimoto, Chris Van de Walle, Arthur Pelton, Andrew R. Barron, Peter Weinberger, Michael Stavola, Nicola Marzari, Sandro Scandolo, Annalisa Fasolino, Arul Kumar, Margit Zacharias, Gudrun Kissinger, Harmut Bracht, Leonid Zhigilei, Kai Tang, Yong Du, Biao Hu, Erik Mazur, Eugene Yakimov, Alexander Thorsten Blumenau, Otto Sankey, David Holec, Jonathan S. Barnard, Anrew Barron, Caterina Summonte, Naoki Fukata, Eike Weber, Giovanni Isella, Alessia Irrera, Tzanimir Arguirov, Pierre Ruterana, WladekWalukiewicz, and to my former coworkers Simona Binetti and Maurizio Acciarri, as well as to my son Michele, his wife Elena, and Silvia Mazzon for their help in improving, when possible, the figures of this book.