Lecture 3

EE-205
Semiconductor Devices
Crystal structure-Unit cell and simple 3d unit
cells
Instructor
Dr. Ahsan Sarwar Rana
 Crystal structure and unit cell
 Since most of the semiconductors are in crystalline form, it is
important to know more about their crystalline structure or crystal
lattice.
 A crystal lattice is a periodic and systematic arrangement of atoms in
the crystal.
 A complex crystalline structure can be represented by a unit cell.
 A unit cell is a small portion of any given crystal that could be used to
reproduce the crystal.

Another acceptable
Crystal Unit cell Replication unit cell
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 Unit cell
 Unit cells are not unique for a material.
 We need unit cell only to reproduce the crystal structure.

 Both the configurations given in figure are acceptable.

 A unit cell need not to be primitive cell, i.e., the smallest possible unit
cell.
 Idea is to employ unit cells with orthogonal sides even if it is bigger
than primitive cell so that the crystal can be easily reproduced.

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 Unit cell and primitive cell

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 Simple 3d unit cells
 Since semiconductors have 3d crystal lattices, therefore, they should
be defined in 3d unit cells.

Separation between two

unit cells (a) is known
as lattice constant

Body centered cubic Face centered cubic

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