If you enjoyed Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics, then enhance your computer desktop with this stylish wallpaper.

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800x600 Britney posing in front of the vaccuum chamber of an MBE machine, used to accurately grow the sometimes hundreds of semiconductor layers of varying materials in today's semiconductor devices.

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800x600 A Distributed Bragg Reflector (DBR) from an etched mesa Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) as seen under an electron microscope. The DBR form a highly reflective mirror required to confine the light to enable stimulated emission to take place. Each of the many layers is around 60-90 nm thick.

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800x600 Britney uttering the equation for the density of states in a bulk semiconductor. The number of energy levels increase with the square root of the energy. m r is the reduced mass of the electron or hole and 'hbar' is Planck's constant. The density of states is different for lower dimensional structures.

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800x600 On this page Britney demonstrates the band structure of a semiconductor material. The reason why semiconductors are partially conducting is because the allow energy levels are separated by a forbidden gap which no energy levels exist. The electrons fill the lowest energy levels first. Conducting electrons must gain energy of at least the energy gap to participate in the conduction process. The calculation on the board is a derivation of the density of states in bulk semiconductor.