Today
Monday, April 6, 2020 4:42 PM
Exam 2 - April 9th (Thursday)
• I will send out at midnight US Central Time
• Have 24 hours to complete
• It should take you less than 2
• Submit through Gradescope
• Don't panic
Today
• Basic semiconductor physics
• Band gap energy
• The PN Junction
• Exam 2 Topics
Basic Semiconductor Physics
• PV devices use semiconductor materials to convert sunlight into
electricity
• Technology is similar to solid-state technologies used to make
transistors, diodes, and all other devices that we use today.
• Most PV generation devices are made out of pure crystalline
silicon.
Fourth group of the periodic table
• Includes Germanium, which is also widely used in devices
Lecture 17 Completed Page 1
Band Gap Energy
Monday, April 6, 2020 7:47 PM
Band Gap Energy
• At absolute zero temperature, silicon is a perfect electrical
insulator. There are no electrons free to roam around as there are
in metals
• As temperature rises, some electrons are given enough energy to
free themselves from their nuclei, making them available to flow as
current.
• The warmer they get, the more electrons are available to carry
current, so conductivity increases.
• Silicon's conductivity at normal temperature is very low => it is
referred to as a semiconductor.
Fig 5.4
We can use an energy band diagram (Fig 5.4).
• Electrons have energies that must fit within certain allowable
energy bands
• At room temperature, only about 1 out of 1010 electrons in silicon
exists in the conduction band
• The gaps between the allowable energy bands are called forbidden
bands. The most important one is the band between the last filled
band and the conduction band.
• The energy than an electron must acquire to jump across the
forbidden band is called the band-gap energy.
• The units for band-gap energy are usually eV (electron-volts),
where one eV is the energy that an electron acquires when its
voltage is increased by 1 V (1 eV = 1.6 x 10-19 J).
• The band-gap energy for silicon is 1.12 eV
○ The energy required to free an electron from its own nucleus.
○ In the case of a PV, this energy comes from the sun: photons of
electromagnetic energy
Lecture 17 Completed Page 2
Lecture 17 Completed Page 3
The P-N Junction
Monday, April 6, 2020 5:54 PM
Lecture 17 Completed Page 4
Lecture 17 Completed Page 5
Lecture 17 Completed Page 6
Exam 2 Review
Monday, April 6, 2020 7:44 PM
TSR
Ideal Power Curve
Lecture 17 Completed Page 7
