ABSTRACT
The Hall voltage measured at the output of a Hall device depends on the properties of the applied material, device geometry, biasing and magnetic field (see §4.2.3). If the latter three quantities are known, measurement of the Hall voltage enables us to determine the pertinent transport properties of carriers in the material the device is made of. In this case, a Hall device is applied as a means for characterizing material. This was the very first and, for many decades, the only application of Hall devices. Currently, the standard methods for characterizing semiconductor materials inevitably include measurements on Hall devices. The subject has been treated in detail in two monographs [1, 2] and also in a chapter of a more recent book [3]. In the first part of this chapter (§§6.1 and 6.2), we shall review these classical methods for characterizing semiconductor materials using the Hall effect. In the last part (§6.3), we shall present a new method for characterizing semiconductor device packages using Hall devices.
