Talk:Doping (semiconductor)

Complete doping materials?
Is the doping material list supposed to be exhaustive? I was pretty sure that copper was used to dope Pentium3 transistors ('Coppermine' core). Maybe it's the case to make this explicit?  MaxDZ8 talk  06:56, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Since copper only has one electron in its outer shell, I don't know how that would be possible. Maybe you're thinking of GaAsSkCu (silicon doped copper compensated gallium arsenide) instead? fintler (talk) 16:05, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Group 4?
Shouldn't this be group 14 instead of group 4? I think the original author was confusing the group number with the number of free electrons. I've changed the article to 14 for now until someone else says otherwise. fintler (talk) 15:51, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've also changed group 3 to group 13, and 5 to 15 with links to their appropriate groups page. Does anyone know if this is accurate? I've added the expert-verify template to see if this section can get some attention. fintler (talk) 15:56, 18 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It should be Roman numeral "Group IV", etc. I changed it. The problem is that there are multiple group notations, including an older one that was used for decades and decades (in several variants), and a different one invented by IUPAC in 1985. Many chemists (in my experience) tend to regard the modern IUPAC one as the "correct one". (This is the one where carbon is "group 14".) But semiconductor physicists universally use a variant of the older notation, where carbon is "Group IV". Since this is a semiconductor physics article, it should use the terminology that is used by all semiconductor physics literature. Otherwise it would cause great confusion for readers, who see one thing on wikipedia and another thing in every semiconductor-physics book, paper, exam, conversation, etc. :-) --Steve (talk) 17:49, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Why is Nitrogen (a Group V element) listed as an acceptor rather than a donor? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:BBA0:2A00:B8CA:97C8:958C:88A4 (talk) 14:31, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Intrinsic/Extrinsic
The terminology of intrinsic and extrinsic are incorrect in the opening paragraph, here "doping intentionally introduces impurities into an extremely pure (also referred to as intrinsic) semiconductor".

Intrinsic semiconductors are materials that act like a semiconductor without any doping at all (i.e. pure). Extrinsic semiconductors are materials that have had a doping agent added to them to make the act like a semiconductor. The key point is that they do not need to be a semiconductor to begin with. Often silicon is doped with an agents, which happens to be an intrinsic semiconductor, but you can dope elements that are not naturally semiconductors in the pure to allow them to act as semiconductors.

Reference: Miessler & Tarr, Inorganic Chemistry, 3rd ed pp. 224, 2004. Pearson Hall, New Jersey. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jhalewood (talk • contribs) 09:36, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * This is not what I was taught through my life. Intrinsic semiconductor is pure semiconductor. Doping changes its properties (conductivity, its temperature dependence, etc) and the doped material is called extrinsic semiconductor. The dopant itself is usually called atom, not a semiconductor. There is no clear relation between the doping properties of that atom and the type of a solid it makes on its own. For example, B and Al are acceptors in Group IV semiconductors but B is a semiconductor itself and Al is a metal; similar for Group V and VI dopants (donors).

Materialscientist (talk) 10:00, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Not clear to the typical reader
'In intrinsic crystalline silicon, there are approximately 5×1022 atoms/cm³. Doping concentration for silicon semiconductors may range anywhere from 1013 cm−3 to 1018 cm−3. Doping concentration above about 1018 cm−3'

This should really be put in terms of parts per billion to parts per million. The way it's currently written reads like a PHD thesis not an encyclopedic article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.61.73.3 (talk) 02:42, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Carrier concentration
This line:
 * "The intrinsic carrier concentration varies between materials and is dependent on temperature. Silicon's ni, for example, is roughly 1.08×1010 cm−3 at 300 kelvins, about room temperature."

is no longer accurate, based on this source that I found: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1529297

Can anyone confirm that the above is accurate? I don't wish to change it in case I've missed something. SpecialAgentCake (talk) 23:21, 10 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The specific point I wish to raise is '300 kelvins'. Surely this should be '300 kelvin'.   Perhaps by using 'kelvins' (the plural form for the unit name), it makes it easier for the reader to understand. Worcestershire1 (talk) 05:45, 15 January 2024 (UTC)