Semiconductor-based technologies continue to evolve and astound us. New materials, new structures, and new manufacturing tools have allowed novel high performance electronic and optoelectronic devices. To understand modern semiconductor devices and to design future devices, it is important that one know the underlying physical phenomena that are exploited for devices. This includes the properties of electrons in semiconductors and their heterostructures and how these electrons respond to the outside world. This book is written for a reader who is interested in not only the physics of semiconductors, but also in how this physics can be exploited for devices.

The text addresses the following areas of semiconductor physics: i) electronic properties of semiconductors including bandstructures, effective mass concept, donors, acceptors, excitons, etc.; ii) techniques that allow modifications of electronic properties; use of alloys, quantum wells, strain and polar charge are discussed; iii) electron (hole) transport and optical properties of semiconductors and their heterostructures; and iv) behavior of electrons in small and disordered structures. As much as possible I have attempted to relate semiconductor physics to modern device developments.

There are a number of books on solid state and semiconductor physics that can be used as textbooks. There are also a number of good monographs that discuss special topics, such as mesoscopic transport, Coulomb blockade, resonant tunneling effects, etc. However, there are few single-source texts containing “old” and “new” semiconductor physics topics.