Essential Classical Mechanics for Device Physics

The continued advances in the precision manufacture of new structures at the nanometer scale have provided unique opportunities for device physics. Transistors fabricated on silicon substrates with a minimum feature size of a few nanometers, electrically connected by a very complex hierarchy of copper metal interconnects, are an established technology. Beyond electronics based on silicon or compound semiconductors, exemplified by gallium arsenide, anisotropic materials such as graphene have attracted attention, and components that explicitly exploit quantum behavior are being explored. Given this environment, it is not surprising that there is a tendency to use detailed quantum-mechanical models to describe device behavior, often ignoring a simpler, usually intuitive, classical approach. This book sets out to summarize those elements of classical mechanics most applicable to the study of device physics. For scientists and engineers, familiarity with the content might be considered a minimum requirement prior to studying more sophisticated quantum models of device behavior. In addition to the text in this book there are problems that the reader may wish to solve. However, the reader should be aware that some problems are more challenging than others. Supplementary material in MATLAB® format is available for all numerically generated figures.