Semiconductor Principles and Uses: Could We Live Without Semiconductors?

This article explains the basic principles of semiconductors and their various applications, emphasizing the important role they play in modern life. It also mentions the impact of the semiconductor industry on national economies and technological progress.

 

A man wakes up in the morning to the sound of his alarm clock. He uses the remote control to turn on the TV and watch the morning news. He shaves with an electric razor and goes into the bathroom to wash his face, illuminated by an automatic sensor. He gets ready to leave for work and takes the bus to his office. When you arrive at work, you get on your computer and start working on various work-related tasks. The office has air conditioning and a coffee pot. Occasionally, he receives a text on his cell phone. At the end of the day, he goes home to enjoy his leisure time on his laptop. Would you believe it if I told you that all of these machines contain semiconductors? We live in a sea of semiconductors, and the era we live in is called the semiconductor kingdom. However, despite the fact that semiconductors are so closely related to our daily lives, it is also true that we are ignorant about them. We don’t know how they are made, how they work, and what they are used for. In this article, we”ll explain how semiconductors work and how they”re used.
A semiconductor is basically a device that allows an external force, called a voltage, to cause an electric current to flow through it. It’s the same way that when the wind blows in a river, the water flows in the direction of the wind. When we say that there is current in a semiconductor, it means that electrons and holes are moving in it, just as water is actually moving when we say that a river is flowing. In other words, electrons and holes cause current to flow in a semiconductor. Because electrons have a negative charge and holes have a positive charge, they move in opposite directions when current flows through the same semiconductor. For example, if current flows to the right, the positive holes will also move to the right, while the negative electrons will move to the left. However, they don’t always move in the same direction. Just as humans need to eat to work, electrons and holes need to be fed by a voltage to do their job. As a result, the voltage causes the electrons and holes to move, and the movement of these two particles causes current to flow in the semiconductor.
By now, you should have realized that a semiconductor is a device that allows current to flow through it. So why is it called a semiconductor at all if it is a conductor? Since a conductor is literally a material that allows current to flow, we can say that a semiconductor is a material that allows half of the current to flow. What we mean by “half” is not half of the absolute amount of current, but rather half of the current that flows at some times and not at other times depending on the conditions. We mentioned earlier that voltage is what makes current flow in a semiconductor. Semiconductors, like batteries, have polarities called + and -, so when the voltage is applied in the positive direction (+), current flows, but when it is applied in the negative direction (-), current stops flowing. If a person on a moving walkway walks in the direction the walkway is moving, they will be able to move forward quickly, but if the walkway is moving in the opposite direction, the person will be stuck in place. Similarly, in semiconductors, the direction in which a voltage is applied determines whether there is current or not.
The basic properties of semiconductors described so far are very important for their applications. Unlike conductors, semiconductors do not always have a current flowing through them, which makes their ability to power our electronic devices possible. Imagine the inconvenience of unplugging all the plugs from the outlet every time you turn off your computer. In addition to power, the switching properties of semiconductors make electronics more functional and sophisticated. We can watch an LCD TV because the light bulbs inside it are not always on, but turn on and off in a sequence, and the strength of cooling devices such as fans and air conditioners is also regulated by which semiconductor is operating. In short, the properties of semiconductors are very important to the various convenient creations that have been made using them.
The uses of semiconductors are so broad that they can’t be defined by any one thing. As we saw in the first part of this article, there are semiconductors in machines all around us. Semiconductors can also be a collection of them that together function as a circuit. They can also be a chip, which is a collection of circuits, such as a thermostat, pressure sensor, or graphics card, that work together to perform a certain task within a device. Semiconductors can also be used to make LEDs, which emit light like a light bulb, to make light bulbs or LED TVs. The camera in a digital camera or cell phone can react differently to different sensitivities of light to capture a specific image, such as a photo or video. The CPUs in computers, cell phones, and calculators can perform complex calculations that humans cannot, and they are also made of semiconductors. This makes semiconductors a very important technology for modern industry because they can be used in any field. They can be transformed into an infinite number of things depending on how they are dressed for a given purpose.
So far, we’ve learned about the principles of semiconductors and their uses. We’ve seen how important the simple principles of semiconductors are to the actual use of semiconductors, and we’ve also seen that the scope of their use is enormous. We are already living in an era where we can’t even imagine a world without semiconductors. In Korea, the semiconductor industry is also very important to the country’s growth engine, ranking first in the world. It is thanks to the semiconductor industry that Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have been able to grow into world-leading companies. In the future, the semiconductor industry is expected to continue to develop through various technological innovations. It would be nice to enjoy our increasingly enriched lives with the advancement of semiconductor technology.