Hello everyone, my name is Yannis Tsividis and I'm a professor of Electrical

Engineering at Columbia University. I would like to welcome you to the MOS

Transistor course on Coursera. In this first video, I would like to

briefly introduce the course. And towards the end of the video, I will

also introduce you to our team. Let me say a few things about this course.

First of all, what are the outcomes you can expect by the end of the course?

If you complete this course successfully, you should be able to do the following.

First of all, understand how an MOS transistor operates at rather deep level

much deeper than what you may have been exposed to in basic courses.

You should be able to predict a MOS transistor behavior in the presence of the

many effects that influence the device. You should be able to understand the

principles behind computerated design or CAD and MOS transistor models.

And you should even be able to begin creating such models yourself.

And finally, if you're a circuit designer, I hope you will be able to use this

detailed knowledge to design better circuits.

What is the background that we assume in this course?

Calculus, basic circuits and electronics. And of course, the course is not about

circuits, but the context in which we discuss the transistor is circuits so it

does help to know something about them. Then, you need to know basic facts about

semiconductors and pn junctions. But I will provide a quick, very quick

review in the first week of the course so that we all have a common background.

Now, what is expected of you as a student in this course?

You need to view the video lectures thoroughly go over them again and again

until you have mastered the material. You need to study the book for this

course. And although some of you may be able to

get by without the book, I really would not recommend trying to do so.

I think, all of you will benefit from reading the book on which this course is

based. Then, you need to do the problem sets

assigned once every week. You participate in discussion forums as

needed. Either to ask your own questions of your

fellow classmates, or perhaps to help another classmate understand something.

You need to also participate in the course surveys.

These are very important for us. And we will talk about what these are

later on. Finally, you have to take two exams, a

midterm exam at about the middle point of this course and the final exam.

Let me say something about learning in this course.

This course has a lot of equations, but definitely it is not about equations.

The course is not just math, rather the course is about developing a physical

understanding, even a physical feel for the phenomena that we will cover.

The problem sets are three types, quiz-type problems, which are needed to

help you understand the meaning and the assumptions behind various results that we

will cover. Some detailed quantitative problems that

are needed for you to get a sense of magnitude for the various quantities

involved. And finally, analytical problems, for

example, to prove a certain result. And these are needed to help tie together

various results. Some additional information.

The lectures are about 2 hours per week. On certain weeks, they may be somewhat

more problem sets are due weekly. Already mentioned that the exams are a

midterm and a final. And the final grade of the course will be

based on 20% homework grade, 35% midterm grade, and 45% final exam grade.

You also need some sort of a math software to allow you to calculate and plot

results, and any packets will do. It could be MATLAB, Mathcad, Mathematica.

A number of, of free programs that are available on web on the web, such as

Octave or Scilab. It doesn't really matter what package you

use as, as long as you can compute and plot with it.

The course is based on this, Operation and Modeling of the MOS Transistor.

Make sure it is the third edition. I give you here the ISBN number.

And I should also say that an international edition of this book, which

has the title MOS Transistor, is also perfectly suitable for this course.

I also should mention that the publisher has arranged for you to be able to get a

very low-cost edition of this book. You can see the course information on this

website for us to, how to get this book. Now, I would like to say something about

references. The results we are discussing in this

course are based on the work of many, many good people over many years.

If I were to do justice to these people, I would have to give hundreds of references.

But there is no time to do this on the slides for this course, therefore I will

have to refer you to the book for detailed references.

Finally, let us discuss the contents of this course.

We will start with an intuitive overview of the MOS transistor or MOSFET, then I

will show you very briefly, a few dominant CMOS fabrication processes, and then I

will review for you semiconductors and pn junctions.

All this will be done in the first week. So, this is a basic background on which to

build. Then, from the second week, week on, we

start with the main course material. We begin with the two terminal MOS

structure, basically a gate, an insulator, and a body.

And we discussed a phenomena that take place in this two terminal chart

structure. Then, we will add one more terminal, we

will call it the source. And we will discuss the additional

phenomena that will take place due to the presence of that third terminal.

Finally, we will add the fourth terminal. We'll call it the drain.

And now, we can have current between source and drain.

So, we will be able to discuss the four terminal MOS transistor as a whole.

The reason we do this gradually, as you see, is that if I were to present to you

directly the four terminal MOS transistor and the dozens phenomena that one

encounters in such a device. It would be more difficult for you to

understand which phenomenon is due to what.

But by separating of this into two terminal, three terminal, four terminal

phenomena I hope that things will be much more clear.

We will then discuss small dimension effects, basically what additional

considerations we need to make when the MOS transistor dimensions become very

small. And as you know, we do try to make

transitions smaller and smaller. At this point, we can start discussing

modeling for circuits in relation for cut programs.

We will discuss the many considerations that go into making such models.

We will talk about the properties of good cap models.

And we will also discuss parameter distraction, which is basically the

process, that allows you to choose values for the quantities involved in the various

models. We will then continue with transient

operation of the device. We will start with large signal dynamic

operation. If the speed of the voltages across the

terminals of the device is not too high, then the device operates as we say,

quasi-statically, we will discuss this type of operation.

And then, we will allow for very high speeds and we will discuss

non-quasi-static operation. Then, we will talk about small signal

modeling. Basically, what happens when the voltages

value only by the minute amount around dc biased value.

First at low frequency, and we also discuss noise and then high frequency.

And finally, we will discuss substrate non-uniformity and structural effects.

So, how to start. First, you take the beginning survey,

which is about you. It asks a few questions about you so that

we can get to know our students. Then, you read the material under course

information on the website. This material repeats some of what I said

in this introduction, but it also contains other useful information.

And then, you view the first week's videos.

Then, you do the first problem set. And finally, you take the first week's

survey about this course, and to tell us how it went this first week.

What you thought the quality of the lectures was, how difficult the problem

sets were things like that. And I hope you will give us suggestions

for improving the course in subsequent weeks.

Hello again. As I promised, I would like to introduce

to you our team. This is Yu Chen and this is Chavin Patel.

Yu why don't you introduce yourself. Hi, everyone.

My name is Yu Chen and currently I'm a first year PhD student in Electrical

Engineer, Engineering school here in the Columbia University.

And before that, I got my bachelors degree from Fudan University in Shanghai, China,

and my master degree from Columbia University.

And both in electrical engineering. And I used to be the teach assist teacher

assistant for the on-campus version of this class in 2012.

And now, I'm glad that I have another chance to help out on the Coursera.

And I do hope that you will have a wonderful experience when learning MOS

transistor from Coursera here. I should also say he was an excellent

teaching assistant, and I was very glad to have him in the on-campus version of this

course. In fact, both of them have taken this

class and they aced it. They were at the very top of the class.

Chavit. Hello, everyone.

I'm Chavit Patel and I'm a PhD student at Columbia University.

Before this, I did my bachelor's at BITS Pilani in India.

And then, I did my masters at Columbia University.

I feel that this course is perfectly suited for a circuit designer who wishes

to understand how the MOS transistor works, and especially how it is modeled in

all the simulators that we used for designing circuits.

And once we have this knowledge, we can improve the way we design circuits as

well. And I've, having done this course, I've

seen a difference in the way I design circuits myself.

And I really had a wonderful experience when I did this course about a year and a

half back. And I hope you enjoy the same as well.

Great. So, I would also like to say a few things.

You would be learning in this course but we will be learning to.

We're learning how to run a MOOC, a Massive Open Online Course.

Personally, I've given courses that were video taped for many years.

But we basically had the camera recording me in front of a blackboard with a real

classroom full of students. Now, what we're doing now with the MOOC is

totally different, so I'm a novice. I'm learning, and there, there are bound

to be some problems, but with your help and your comments, I hope we'll be able to

improve them. One problem for me is that I'm staring at

the camera rather at, than staring at many students in the class and it is difficult

for me to give a lively lecture. I really have to, to practice and get used

to the idea that behind the color are, are thousands of students.

In the first week of the class, we may have some additional problems because we

are learning how to record and how to edit.

Fortunately, we have an expert help by Lewis Cohen who is actually now behind the

camera. But there're bound to be some problems, as

I said, we're learning. Another problem is the nature of the

material in the first week is such that it is difficult to do justice to it.

I'm trying to give you in one week the basic background that you need for the

rest of the course. So, I will necessarily have to compress a

lot of materials from physics. And I will not be able to explain

everything in detail. So, I hope you bear with me.

And then starting in the second week, things could be smoother.

We are counting on your filling the survey after the end of the first week to help us

know how we are doing. So, see you in class.

See you.

About This Course

MOS Transistors

Meet the Instructors