Talk:Semiconductor/Archives/2015

Lead Rewrite Needed

Guys, in order to understand the history and physics of semiconductors you better have an advanced degree in astrophysics or nuclear physics. When you are dealing on the nanoscale just the math is very difficult to explain in a manner in which a common man can understand. But it is not impossible. Einstien explained his theory of relativity using plain geometry.

That is the challenge. I have spent almost 20 years in the industdry and my family still has no clue what I do.

I would recomend that the topic be broken down. Just off the top of my head I can count over 20 subcategories that would be beneficial to the common man.

Moving forward, I think this is the way to go. Have a generic front end, and then hit them with the particulars.

We live in rare times. In a mere 40 odd years the ingenuity of American know how and just plain grit has changed the course of human history for times eternal.

Time to saddle up guys. Write the record. I think the best way to attack this is to walk people thru the manufacturing process as a baseline. Expound from there the physics involved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chukalukabus (talk • contribs) 01:37, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the lead here isn't as clear as it should be. It manifests one of the Wikipedia pitfalls, namely disjointed writing, as may happen when multiple authors contribute piecemeal. Further, it doesn't give a clear picture to the general audience. I think it's too technical.

Bottom line is I went to this page to learn what semiconductors are and I came away not knowing.

Then I read this page: "Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable" ...and came away believing the page on Semiconductors doesn't meet the criteria.

Is there a good writer out there who knows the topic and might comb through the lead and make it better? Jaywuz (talk) 20:49, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Amen to this, this page is worthless to 90% of people searching on semiconductors. I feel the same, I came here to learn what a semiconductor does and that issue is not addressed in this article. It should be the first paragraph. This article is just techno ramble and has no value to me whatsoever. However if I was taught how a semiconductor worked and the philosopy,structure, what task it is set out to accomplish, and how it accomplishes it; the technical details would fall into place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.99.139.213 (talk) 06:46, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

It's worse than that. The whole subject on WP is a dog's breakfast. There are articles entitled "Electrical resistance and conductance", "Electrical resistivity and conductivity", "Electrical conductor", "Fast ion conductor", "Conductivity (electrolytic)", "Ionic conductivity", "Superconductivity", "Insulator (electricity)", "Mott insulator", "Topological insulator", "Electric current", "Semiconductor", "Semiconductor device", a number of disambiguation pages and no doubt some more. The first problem is inconsistency of title, secondly duplication, thirdly some merges are needed and while all that is being done all of the articles need to be rewritten in encyclopaedic form. Altogether this is a huge job and is best approached by some preliminary decisions. What set of articles would best cover the subject? How should the titles be made consistent? Some consideration of redirection and/or disambiguation. What else? treesmill (talk) 22:01, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the first post. I wanted to know the basics about semiconductors but the discontinuity and techno-babble made it difficult to pull out information. I made a few edits to clarify clearly grammatically incorrect sentences, especially in the first paragraph, like "In crystalline silicon typically this is achieved by adding impurities of boron or phosphorus...". However, I'm still somewhat in the dark about about semiconductors in general. I'll try to continue making small fixes to make the article readable, but people who know what they're doing really need to perform an overhaul. AlejoM (talk) 08:59, 8 July 2012 (EST)

Today I have spent the better part of the evening trying to rewrite the lead in to this article. There is definitely some merit to the proposal to merge the two similar articles 'Semiconductors' and 'Semiconductor devices', the latter of which is written in a far more accessible style. While over simplifying a complex subject invariably leaves out much valuable material it isn't of much use to write at a PhD thesis level here. If detail and complexity are what someone is looking for there are sources a plenty for that but surely not here. Spyglasses 07:58, 25 June 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spyglasses (talk • contribs)

obsolete notification

first paragraph ends with : Some of the information on this page may be outdated within a year because new discoveries are made in the field frequently.[2]

This should be made as a comment box in the top or something. Not a generally hard to notice sentence buried in the text.

I do not know how to do it properly. hope someone else can do it. Thanks Jazi Zilber (talk) 19:51, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Preparation of Semiconductor Materials

The section on the preparation of semiconductor materials is almost completely useless. Besides the brief final paragraph, only the methods for making ICs and silicon waffers are being described. There is too little on how to synthesize various semiconducting materials or the ratios within the formulas of n- and p- type semiconductors. This page needs a Chemist to list specific examples of semicondutors and the processes by which they are commercially made. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cameronreissmueller (talk • contribs) 10:50, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion it would be possible to be over-detailed here, and risk making the article even less accessible to the general reader than it already is. With that caveat in mind, I would urge you to be bold and make the changes you would like to see - provided you are summarizing what external reliable sources say about the topic, which is basically all anyone may do in a Wikipedia article, expert or layman. There is quite a lot of information in the Doping_(semiconductor) article for what it's worth. Thparkth (talk) 11:23, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Materials

Changed Roman-numeral group numbers to modern IUPAC (Arabic numeral) terminology. E.g. group 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 instead of group II, III, IV, V, VI. Eldin raigmore (talk) 01:45, 31 December 2015 (UTC)