ECE 5330 Contents

Syllabus and Course Details
Lecture Notes and Handouts
Homework and Exams

Note: Projects and Labs are not available for this course.

Lecture Notes and Handouts

• Handout 1 [PDF]: Review of basic semiconductor physics: Elemental and compound semiconductors, semiconductor VI, III-V and II-VI binary, ternary, and quaternary compounds, semiconductor alloys, material properties, crystal structure, semiconductor bandstructures, density of states, Fermi levels and carrier statistics, doping, Shockley equations, band diagrams in real space.
• Handout 2 [PDF]: Semiconductor heterostructure basics: Band lineups, pn heterojunction diodes, n-n and p-p heterojunctions, semiconductor quantum wells, electron and hole energy subbands, 2-D density of states, pseudomorphic strained layers, relaxed layers, critical thickness of strained layers, strain compensation.
• Handout 3 [PDF]: Light-matter interaction, Fermi’s golden rule and transition rates, selection rules, optical transitions in bulk semiconductors, stimulated absorption, stimulated emission, loss, gain, joint density of states,  spontaneous emission of photons and spontaneous emission rates, spontaneous emission into a single electromagnetic cavity mode, density of states for photons.
• Handout 4 [PDF]: Bandstructure of III-V Zincblende compound semiconductors, LCAO and tight binding methods, spin orbit coupling, heavy-hole, light-hole, and split-off-hole bands, optical transition matrix elements for bulk semiconductors.
• Handout 5 [PDF]: Semiconductor photodetectors, Shockley equations for photodetectors, PN junction photodetectors, PIN detectors, performance figures of merit, small signal models and bandwidth of photodetectors, avalanche photodetectors, solar cells, fundamental limitations on solar energy conversion and photodetector performance.
• Handout 6 [PDF]: More on light matter interaction in semiconductors, dielectric constant of semiconductors, intraband (free carrier) absorption and the plasma effect,  Kramers-Kronig relation and linear response functions.
• Handout 7 [PDF]: Semiconductor light emitting diodes (LEDs), radiative and non-radiative recombination mechanisms in semiconductors, carrier density rate equations, LED figures of merit, survey of visible LEDs, solid state lighting, fundamentals of lighting, LEDs for lighting applications.
• Handout 8 [PDF]: Integrated optical waveguides, dielectric slab waveguides, 2D dielectric waveguides, full-vectorial, semi-vectorial, and scalar solutions for propagating modes, perturbation theory, slowly varying envelope approximation, power and energy in dielectric waveguides.
• Handout 9 [PDF]: Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), modal gain and material gain, waveguide losses, photon density and carrier density equations, gain saturation, input-output characteristics of SOAs, amplified spontaneous emission (ASE).
• Handout 10 [PDF]:Optical interband transitions in low dimensional semiconductor structures (semiconductor quantum wells), optical matrix elements, selection rules, dependence on field polarization, conduction-heavy hole and conduction-light hole transitions in quantum wells, multiple quantum well gain structures.
• Handout 11 [PDF]: Semiconductor lasers I and II: Integrated laser cavities, carrier and photon density rate equations, steady state solutions, laser dynamics, relaxation oscillations, direct current modulation and modulation bandwidth, current-voltage characteristics of lasers.
• Handout 12 [PDF]: Semiconductor lasers III: Optical cavities and cavity modes, S-matrix and T-matrix analysis of laser cavities, Bragg gratings and DBR reflectors, vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs), S-matrix and T-matrix analysis of VCSELs, calculation of threshold gain and photon lifetime, photon density rate equations, transverse modes in VCSELs.
• Handout 13 [PDF]: Semiconductor lasers IV: Distributed feedback structures and waveguide gratings, coupled mode theory for first order Bragg gratings,  DBR lasers, multimode and single mode operation, threshold gain, photon lifetime, and longitudinal mode frequencies of DBR lasers. DFB lasers, threshold gain, photon lifetime, and longitudinal mode frequencies of DFB lasers.
• Handout 14 [PDF]: Semiconductor lasers V: Frequency chirp in directly modulated semiconductor lasers, FM and IM response of semiconductor lasers, spontaneous emission and phase noise, linewidth of lasers, relaxation oscillations and linewidth of semiconductor lasers.
• Handout 15 [PDF]: Semiconductor lasers VI: Tunable and widely tunable semiconductor lasers, refractive index changes with carrier density in semiconductors.
• Handout 16 [PDF]: Plasmonics, bulk and surface plasmons in metals, confined plasmon modes in metal particles, semiconductor plasmon lasers.