A Smartphone Controlled Experiment to determine the Energy Band Gap of a Semiconductor using Novel Graphical Techniques

A smartphone or a tablet running on Android has been used to control an experiment to determine the energy band gap of a semiconductor. The smartphone is interfaced with the experimental circuit through a cheap microcontroller. A dedicated android application has been developed to help the user perform the experiment by acquisition and plotting of the data in real time. Curve-fitting and novel graphical techniques have been employed to determine the energy band gap, bypassing the need to use expensive electronic instruments. The graphs may be plotted on a virtual e-graph paper mimicking an actual graph paper on the smartphone screen. Since the user may not touch any instrument except his own smartphone while carrying out the experiment, chances of acquiring Covid-19 inside the laboratory would also have been reduced.