TABLE OF CONTENTS The purpose of this chapter is to provide a concise overview of a lot of different subject matter that forms the basis of understanding semiconductors, semiconductor devices and start-to-end product realisation using them. Much of this material is considered a prerequisite to understanding devices in traditional learning settings. To master the prerequisite material the reader will need formal courses or in-depth texts for self study. The authors recognise that not all readers may have become well schooled in these subjects prior to learning GaAs processing techniques, in part because of their breadth of scope and of the theoretical character. Hopefully, these readers will benefit at this time from simplified explanations of a number of broad subject areas and from the references to sources with more complete coverage. These "layman's" introductions should help readers place the processing techniques and the necessary multidisciplinary topics quickly into proper context within the more fundamental subjects.
The basics of semiconductors and their properties [1 5] most useful in semiconductor devices are given in Section 2.2. Section 2.3 introduces the basic techniques for GaAs crystal growth. Section 2.4 presents the main methods of epitaxial growth, metal-organic chemical vapour deposition and molecular beam epitaxy. Section 2.5 introduces some of the more important semiconductor characterisation techniques. In Section 2.6, some processing techniques that are common to many of the later chapters are presented. Specialised processing techniques and equipment are introduced in later chapters as the need arises.
