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Reviewer: Vitit Kantabutra

This well-written classroom text on VLSI devices is intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Though written as a classroom text, complete with exercises, this book will also prove valuable to practicing designers and researchers because of the many advanced topics included. The text covers a wide range of material for its size, including topics that have recently become important for both MOSFET and bipolar devices, such as short-channel effect, velocity saturation, breakdown voltage, base-widening effects, and power dissipation. Device textbooks are difficult to write well, perhaps due to the number of physical assumptions that have to be made in order to make the mathematical models tractable. Given that, the authors have done a remarkable job of explaining things clearly. The judicious inclusion of bold, italicized phrases is quite helpful. Chapter 1, the introductory chapter, gives a good but brief overview of modern MOS and bipolar devices and of the rest of the book. Chapter 2, on basic device physics, goes all the way from energy bands to such modern topics as thin-i-layer p-i-n diodes. Chapters 3 through 5 are about MOSFETs. Chapter 3 introduces MOSFET devices, starting with long-channel MOSFETs and then moving on to the more important short-channel MOSFETs of today, where analysis becomes more complicated partly because the relevant mathematical models (such as the field pattern in the depletion region) are more complex than those used for analyzing long-channel devices. Chapter 4 examines key CMOS device design issues. After a discussion of scaling, the chapter examines two important issues—threshold voltage and channel length. Chapter 5 discusses some basic CMOS circuit elements and their layouts, then goes on to discuss parasitics and the sensitivity of CMOS delay to device parameters. The chapter closes with a discussion of advanced CMOS devices and their performance factors. The rest of book, chapters 6 through 8, is on modern bipolar devices. Chapter 6 introduces bipolar transistors, going from the basic operations to breakdown voltages. Chapter 7 is on bipolar device design, covering the design of emitter, base, and collector regions, as well as modern issues such as polysilicon emitters and SiGe-base bipolar transistors. Finally, chapter 8 covers bipolar performance factors, including device optimization and scaling for digital and analog circuits. The book is logically organized. Both the ideas and the presentation are first-rate. The typesetting and diagrams are superb. As mentioned earlier, this book includes a large amount of material for its size. Thus the presentation, however clear, is dense and can take some time to read. There is no evidence that the book has been tried in the classroom, so it remains to be seen how well it would actually work as a classroom text. There is also no evidence of any teaching aids, such as a CD-ROM, Web site, or instructor's manual.