Electronic Devices Interview

Questions and Answers

Q.1. What are the characteristics of semiconductor?

Answer: The characteristics of semiconductor are as follows-

 Semiconductors have negative temperature coefficient of
resistance.
 At very low temperatures, the resistivity of semiconductors
matches with that of insulators.
 They don’t follow ohms law.
 The electrical conductivity is very much affected by even a very
minute amount of other substances called impurities.
Q.2. What is the difference between direct and indirect band gap
semiconductors?
Answer: In direct band gap semiconductor minimum of conduction band and
maximum of valence band occurs for same K value (K is known as wave
vector or propagation constant) while in indirect band gap semiconductors
the minimum of conduction band and maximum of valence band occurs for
different values of K. Direct band gap semiconductors are GaAs, GaSb, ZnS
etc whereas Si and Ge are indirect band gap semiconductors.
Q.3. Define Fermi level.
Answer: Fermi level in a semiconductor can be defined as the maximum
energy that an electron in an semiconductor have at zero degree Kelvin.
Q.4. What is a degenerate semiconductor?
Answer: A heavily doped semiconductor, in which the Fermi level lies in the
conduction or valence band so that material behaves as a metal is known as
degenerate semiconductor.
Q.5. What will be the direction of electrons and holes when an electric
field is applied across the semiconductor?
Answer: when an electric field is applied across the semiconductor, direction
of holes is same as the direction of electric field and direction of electrons is
opposite to that of electric field.
Q.6. What is recombination and also tell what is used in semiconductor
to increase the recombination rate?
Answer: Recombination is a process of merging a free electron and hole.
Gold is used in semiconductor to increase the recombination rate.
Q.7. What will be the effect on the conductivity of metals, silicon and
germanium semiconductor upon per degree rise in temperature?
Answer: Conductivity of metals is decreased by 0.4% per degree rise in
temperature. Conductivity of silicon semiconductor is increased by 8% per
degree rise in temperature. Conductivity of germanium semiconductor is
increased by 6% per degree rise in temperature.
Q.8. What is mass action law?
Answer: Under thermal equilibrium, the product of concentration of free
electrons (n) and the concentration of holes (p) is constant and is independent
of the amount of doping by donor and acceptor impurities. This is known as
mass action law. Thus, n.p = ni2. Where ni is the intrinsic concentration and
is a function of temperature.
Q.9. How electrons and holes will move when an electric field is applied
to an intrinsic semiconductor from left to right?
Answer: Electrons move to the left while holes drift to the left.
Q.10. What is Hall effect and its use?
Answer: When a specimen (metal or semiconductor) carrying a current ‘I’ is
placed in a transverse magnetic field ‘B’, then an electric field ‘E’ is induced
in the direction perpendicular to both ‘I’ and ‘B’. This phenomenon is called
Hall effect. The Hall effect may be used for-
 Whether a semiconductor is N type or P type.
 Finding the carrier concentration.
 In calculating the mobility by measuring the conductivity.
Q.11. Which band gap materials are used for the fabrication of Laser?
Answer: Direct band gap materials having high carrier life time are used for
fabrication of laser.
Q.12. Which type of semiconductor is not applicable to Einstein
formula?
Answer: Degenerate semiconductors are not applicable to Einstein formula
because in this type of semiconductor the Fermi level is with-in the valence
band and conduction band.
Q.13. What are the properties of an ideal diode?
Answer: An ideal diode is a two terminal device which has the following
properties-
 Conducts with zero resistance when forward biased.
 Offers an infinite resistance when reverse biased.
Q.14. What is the difference between static and dynamic resistance of a
diode?
Answer: Static resistance is defined as the ratio of dc voltage across the
diode to the dc current flowing through it. The dynamic or ac resistance of a
diode at a particular dc voltage is defined as the reciprocal of the slope of the
forward characteristics.
Q.15. What is the difference between drift current and diffusion
current?
Answer: Drift current is the current which flows due to electric field applied
whereas diffusion current flows due to concentration gradient.
Q.16. When consider together, what will be the combination when an
ideal constant voltage source is connected in series with an ideal constant
current source?
Answer: The combination will be a constant current source.
Q.17. What is the difference between transducer and sensor?
Answer: In transducer the input is some physical quantity like temperature,
water level etc and output is either some electrical signal or may be some
other physical quantity while in sensor the input may be a physical quantity
or electrical signal while output is always electrical quantity.
Q.18. Which diode capacitance is higher in forward and reverse biased?
Answer: In forward biased diffusion capacitance is higher than transition
capacitance whereas in reverse biased transition capacitance is higher than
diffusion capacitance.
Q.19. What is zener breakdown?
Answer: When the PN junction diode is heavily doped the depletion layer is
very thin, therefore a small reverse potential difference causes a high electric
field at the junction. When field becomes sufficiently high, it may break the
covalent bonds and reduce new electron hole pairs. Then the reverse current
increases rapidly and the breakdown is known as zener breakdown.
Q.20. What is Avalanche breakdown?
Answer: The Avalanche breakdown occurs in those junctions which are
lightly doped (means wide depletion layer). In this case, the minority carriers
gain a large amount of kinetic energy from the applied reverse voltage to
collide with the covalent bonds of the atom.
So due to head on collision between the covalent bonds and the minority
carriers, bonds are broken and a new pairs of electrons and holes are
generated. This process will continue and number of free electrons and holes
are generated and therefore produces a rapid multiplication of reverse
current. This phenomenon is known as Avalanche breakdown.

Q.21. What are the applications of zener diode?

Answer: The applications of zener diode are-
 As a voltage regulator.
 As a fixed reference voltage in transistor biasing.
 As a limiter in wave shaping circuits.
 For a meter protection.
Q.22. What is the temperature coefficient of resistance for zener and
Avalanche diode?
Answer: Temperature coefficient of resistance of zener diode is negative
whereas the temperature coefficient of resistance of Avalanche diode is
positive.
Q.23. Whether diode is a linear or non-linear device?
Answer: A diode is a non-linear device.
Q.24. Which diode is used to generate harmonics?
Answer: Step recovery diode is used to generate harmonics.
Q.25. What Einstein’s equation relates?
Answer: Einstein’s equation relates diffusion constant with mobility.
Q.26. What is the difference between thermistor and sensistors?
Answer: Thermistor is a bulk semiconductor device which has negative
temperature coefficient of resistivity i.e., the resistance decreases
exponentially with increasing temperature whereas sensistors is a heavily
doped bulk semiconductor which has positive temperature coefficient of
resistance because heavily doped semiconductor acquires the properties of a
metal.
Q.27. Does the thickness of the depletion region ever become zero as the
applied forward biased to a p-n junction is increased?
Answer: No because as the applied voltage is increased, less and less voltage
is dropped across it due to a progressive fall in its resistance.
Q.28. What is photo diode?
Answer: Photo diode is a two terminal device which operates on reverse
bias. It has a small transparent window which allows light to strike the PN
junction. When there is a dark current it means no radiation. In reverse bias
condition in the absence of light the reverse current through diode is very
small, but as soon as light is made to fall on the junction a large amount of
current flows and the diode is forward biased.
Q.29. What are the applications of photo diode?
Answer: Some important applications are-
 Photo detection.
 Demodulation.
 Logic circuits.
 Switching.
 Optical communication system
Photo voltaic cell is a special application of photo diode.

Q.30. What is the difference between LED and PN junction diode?

Answer: PN junction which emits light when forward biased are called light
emitting diode. Only difference between LED and PN junction diode is of the
material used for manufacturing LEDs. Examples are-
 Gallium arsenide (GaAs) emits infrared radiation.
 Gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP) emits red or yellow light.
  Gallium phosphide (GaP) emits red or green light.
 Gallium nitride emits blue light.
Q.31. What is schottky diode?
Answer: It is formed by joining a doped semiconductor region with a metal
such as gold, silver or platinum. Few important points about schottky diode
are-
 Schottky diode is a metal to semiconductor junction.
 Schottky diode only operates with majority carriers.
 Semiconductor used is usually N type.
 It does not have any charge storage, therefore it is very fast.
 Semiconductor region is lightly doped.
Q.32. What is the use of Rectifier circuit?
Answer: Rectifier circuit is used to convert an ac voltage into dc voltage.
Q.33. What is the output frequency of full wave rectifier as compared to
half wave rectifier?
Answer: The output frequency of the full wave rectifier will be doubled as
compared to half wave rectifier.
Q.34. What is transistor?
Answer: A transistor is a three layer semiconductor device consisting of
either two ‘n’ and one ‘p’ layer of material or two ‘p’ and one ‘n’ type layer
of material to form npn and pnp transistor respectively. The word
‘TRANSISTOR’ means transfer + resistor. It means transfer of signal from
low resistance circuit to a high resistance circuit i.e, from input to output. A
transistor has a very important property that it can raise the strength of a
weak signal, which is called amplification.
Q.35. Can any device acts as an amplifier?
Answer: Since no device can generate energy, so no one can act as an
amplifier. Actually all the amplifying devices works as an energy converter.
Q.36. What is the difference between amplifier and transformer?
Answer: An amplifier changes the power level of a signal by changing either
current or voltage or both whereas in a transformer if the voltage increases
the current decreases and vice-versa. No change in the power level of the
signal takes place. So we can say that transformer cannot be treated as an
amplifier.
Q.37. What is Early effect or base width modulation effect in BJT?
Answer: In a BJT area of collector is largest while that of base is smallest so
when reverse bias is applied to collector base junction, the depletion layer
widens more in lightly doped base region than in collector region. A stage is
reached when reverse bias voltage is made so large that effective base width
becomes negligible and electrons flow directly from collector to emitter. This
is known as Early effect or base width modulation effect in BJT.
Q.38. Which transistor configuration is most widely used and its
application?
Answer: Common emitter configuration is most widely used configuration
because it provides voltage as well as current gain. CE configuration is used
in audio frequency applications.
Q.39. What is the application of common base configuration?
Answer: Common base (CB) configuration is used for high frequency
applications.
Q.40. What is the application of common collector (CC) configuration?
Answer: Because of high input resistance and low output resistance, this
circuit is used for impedance matching.
Q.41. What are the effects of fixed emitter bias configuration circuit?
Answer: When emitter resistance RE is introduced in fixed bias circuit is
called emitter bias. It’s effects are-
 It improves stability by negative feedback.
 Input impedance increases due to resistance RE in the emitter.
 Emitter bias circuit is less sensitive for variation in β.
Q.42. What is thermal runaway?
Answer: Because of I2R losses, temperature of transistor increases which in
turn further increases IC. This increase in IC will further increase the
temperature and this process is cumulative which ultimately lead to very high
value of IC at very high temperature. Because of this high temperature
thermal breakdown in transistor is observed which is called thermal runaway.
To avoid the thermal runaway, VCE < VCC / 2.
Q.43. Is it possible to measure the built in potential of a PN junction with
the help of voltmeter?
Answer: Voltmeter cannot be used for measurement because the contact
potential established at the points of connection of the voltmeter will give
wrong measurements.
Q.44. What are the advantages of FET over conventional transistors?
Answer: The advantages of FET over conventional transistors are as
follows-
 The FET is a unipolar device, depending only upon majority
carriers. Vacuum tube is also an example of unipolar device. The
conventional transistor is a bipolar device (operation depends on
both the majority and minority carriers).
 FET has high input resistance. Thus , FET is a voltage controlled
device like a vacuum tube and not current controlled like a
conventional transistor.
 FET is less noisy than a vacuum tube or bipolar transistor because
no junctions are present like BJT. so, the partition noise is absent.
  FET is relatively less affected by radiation.
 It has better thermal stability.
 In integrated form, the fabrication of FET is simpler and it
occupies less space.
 FET has smaller size, longer life and high efficiency. FET has very
high power gain.
Q.45. What are the disadvantages of FET over conventional transistor?
Answer: The disadvantages of FET over conventional transistor are as
follows-
 Transconductance is low and hence the voltage gain is low.
 In case of transistor, Transconductance is high, so the voltage gain
is high.
 They are more costly than junction transistors.
 FET has relatively small gain bandwidth product.
Q.46. Many FET devices can be connected in parallel increase the
current and power capability. Is the same true for BJT’s?
Answer: No, it is not possible in BJT’s because the collector current in a
BJT increases rapidly with temperature leading to second breakdown.
Q.47. Describe how an FET can be used as a voltage variable resistor
(VVR)?
Answer: In most of the linear applications of FET the device is operated in
the constant current portion of its output characteristics that is in saturation
region. FET can also be used in the region before pinch-off VDS is small.
FET when used in region before pinch-off, it works as variable resistance
device i.e., the channel resistance is controlled by the gate bias voltage
(VGS). In such an application the FET is referred as voltage variable or
voltage dependent resistor.
Q.48. Why n-channel MOSFETS are preferred over p-channel
MOSFETS in integrated circuits?
Answer: The n-channel MOSFETS are preferred over p-channel MOSFETS
in integrated circuits due o following reasons-
 NMOS has faster operation than PMOS because the mobility of
electrons is greater than mobility of holes.
 P-channel MOSFETS are very bulky and hence difficult to
fabricate in integrated circuits.
 N-channel MOSFETs is equally suitable for both depletion and
enhancement mode operation while P-channel MOSFET is suitable
only for enhancement mode operation.
 N-channel MOSFETs have higher packing density than that of p-
channel MOSFETs.
Q.49. What is channel length modulation?
Answer: Channel length modulation is present in MOSFET and it is similar
to early effect in BJT. When the drain voltage is increased beyond the onset
of saturation, the pinch-off point begins to shift towards the source. This
displacement is called as channel length modulation.
Q.50. Which type of amplifier has feedback BJT or FE or both?
Answer: Due to component hre there is feedback from output to input in BJT
while there is no feedback in FET.