Concept

Band gap — where it appears

The energy separating a semiconductor's filled electron states from its empty ones, 1.12 electronvolts for silicon at room temperature. It sets how steeply every junction current rises with temperature: the saturation current carries the whole gap in its Boltzmann factor, and the generation current half of it.

Named by 4 essays across 2 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

A diode's drop from 250 to 400 K, at 1.00 mA. computed by solving, not by drawing. Thirty-one operating points, each Newton's method on the exponential at its own temperature. The drop falls at 1.828 mV/K measured against 1.830 mV/K from the closed form — falls, although the thermal voltage in the exponent rises, because the saturation current rises faster. Over the same range the slope per decade of current goes the other way, from 49.6 mV to 79.4 mV, because that one is Vₜ ln 10 and nothing else.

Two millivolts a kelvin, and the wrong sign

Every number in the semiconductor field was computed at 300 K, and the model had no temperature in it at all. Putting it in moves a diode's drop by 1.828 mV/K — downwards, although the thermal voltage in the exponent is rising, because the saturation current rises by nine orders of magnitude across the same range. Two temperature dependences of one device, of opposite sign, from one solve.

semiconductors · Temperature

Two currents called saturation: one doubles every 4.49 K, the other every 8.98 K. computed by solving, not by drawing. The two current scales of one model junction against temperature, on a logarithmic axis. The saturation current of the exponential law goes as the square of the intrinsic carrier density — a cube of the temperature and the whole band gap in a Boltzmann factor — and doubles every 4.489 K at 300 K. The generation current a reverse-biased junction actually conducts goes as the density itself, with half the band gap, and doubles every 8.978 K: exactly twice as long, at every temperature. The dashed line is "doubles every ten kelvin" drawn through the generation scale, which is the current the rule belongs to. At 300 K this junction's two scales are 10 fA and 2 nA, which are its own parameters and not a property of silicon, and they become equal only at 616.8 K, or 343.6 °C.

Two currents with one name

A junction's saturation current is two currents with one name. The one in the forward law doubles every 4.49 kelvin; the one a reverse-biased junction actually conducts is generated in its depletion region, doubles every 8.98, and on this model junction is 3.06 × 10⁵ times larger at a volt of reverse bias. Doubles every ten kelvin is the second current's rule, and applied to the first it turns the forward drop's −1.81 millivolts per kelvin into +0.39.

limits · Diode model

Two junctions at 8 to 1 in area, at four currents from 10 µA to 10 mA. computed by solving, not by drawing: each drop is the diode law solved at its own temperature, from 200 to 400 K, with a saturation current that rises 15.0 orders of magnitude over the range. The two drops themselves sit 179 mV apart across the four currents; their difference does not move at all. It is Vₜ·ln 8 to 0.40 parts in a million at 10 mA and to 0.040% at the worst point, 10 µA at 400 K, where the larger junction's saturation current is no longer negligible against the current — 53.758 mV at 300 K, rising 179.19 µV/K — and the straight line through it reaches 0.001 µV at absolute zero (dashed).

The voltage at which the slope is zero

Two junctions carrying one current, one of them eight times the other's area, differ by exactly the thermal voltage times ln 8 — 53.758 mV at 300 K, rising 179.19 µV/K along a line that reaches zero at absolute zero to a thousandth of a microvolt — while each drop alone moves 1.9 mV/K. Weighted by 10.72 and added to one drop, the difference cancels it, and the sum is then 1.171704 V. That voltage is not a coincidence of this design: every weighting of the sum leaves the band gap at absolute zero, so a reference's slope at 300 K is its distance from 1.1717 V divided by 300 K, and two hundred references built wrong three different ways sit on that one line to 0.16 nV/K. A reference is trimmed by its voltage, at one temperature, and the voltage it is trimmed to is a statement about how its current is made.

semiconductors · Temperature

A reference flattened at 300 K, from −40 to 125 °C, with its core current as T to the 1. computed by solving, not by drawing every 1.25 K. The reference has zero slope at 300 K by construction and its output there is 1.17170 V. It is never flat anywhere else: it falls 1.391 mV by −40 °C and 2.526 mV by 125 °C, a bow of 2.526 mV that no choice of the weight can remove, and the residue matches −(xti − α)·Vₜ·[x ln x − (x − 1)] with x = T/300 K (dashed) to within the diode law's "+1".

The bow a trim leaves

A band-gap reference trimmed to zero slope at 300 K is flat at exactly one temperature. Everywhere else it falls: 1.39 mV by −40 °C and 2.53 mV by 125 °C for a core biased proportional to absolute temperature, 3.79 mV for one run at a constant current, and nothing at all for one whose current rises as the cube of temperature. The residue is (xti − α) thermal voltages times x ln x − (x − 1), with x the temperature over the trim temperature, and six references of different bias, exponent and current fall on that one curve. The least box, 1.9 mV, comes from making the slope zero at 39 °C rather than at room temperature; quoted per kelvin it is 9.8 ppm/K over the automotive range and 4.2 over the commercial one. A third junction supplies the bow's own shape, and subtracting it leaves 18 µV — at an output that is then the band gap itself.

semiconductors · Temperature

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Model range Saturation current Temperature coefficient Thermal voltage Closed form Operating point Design tradeoff Device matching Dynamic resistance Ideality factor Input bias current Leakage current

All concepts