ABSTRACT
A semiconducting material is dened as one that is electrically insulating at a temperature of absolute zero but that becomes conducting for temperatures below its melting point. The property that rst attracted the attention of physicists in the early nineteenth century was the decreasing resistivity with increasing temperature, in stark contrast to metals where the opposite is true (Faraday 1839, Smith 1964, Ashcroft and Mermin 1976, p. 563). Both of these effects occur in semiconductors because it is possible to thermally excite charge carriers from a full energy band that prevents conduction to an unoccupied band that then allows electrons to move freely. The structure of these energy bands is used to explain most of the properties of semiconductors. In this chapter, we therefore begin with a brief introduction to semiconductor band structures and then continue with our discussion on some of the important and interesting properties observed in semiconductors and their nanostructures.
