It is a pleasure to take the opportunity to express my sincere grati tude to many colleagues who provided valuable hints for improvements, even including lists of misprints (which I hope have now been complete ly eliminated). It is not possible to name all of them, and so I will only mention the interesting discussions over so many years I had with Pro fessor Hans W. Pötzl of the Technical University of Vienna on the oc casion of our common weekly semiconductor seminar. I am grateful to Professor H.-J. Queisser and Professor M. Cardona for helpful criticism. Special thanks are due to Frau Jitka Fucik for typing and Frau Viktoria Köver for drawing services. The cooperation with Dr. H.K. Lotsch of Springer-Verlag has been a pleasure. Vienna, January 1982 K. Seeger Contents 1. Elementary Properties of Semiconductors . . .. I 1.1 Insulator - Semiconductor - Semimetal - Metal 1 1.2 The Positive Hole ... 3 1.3 Conduction Processes, Compensation, Law ofMass Action 4 Problems . 8 2. Energy Band Structure . 10 2.1 Single and Periodically Repeated Potential Well 10 2.2 Energy Bands by Tight Binding ofElectrons to Atoms 17 2.3 The Brillouin Zone 21 2.4 Constant Energy Surfaces 30 Problems . 33 3. Semiconductor Statistics 34 3.1 Fermi Statistics ... 35 3.2 Occupation Probabilities ofImpurity Levels 39 Problems . 45 4. Charge and Energy Transport in a Nondegenerate Electron Gas.