basics
Examples
In solid state physics, a semiconductor is a crystalline material for which the electron chemical potential lies in a small gap between a valence band and a conduction band.
This means that a semi-conductor behaves like an insulator unless a little extra energy is supplied to lift the electrons out of the valence bundle into the conduction bundle, in which case it starts behaving like a conductor (or metal).
This “external switching” of electron conductivity in semi-conductors is the basis of transistors? and hence of digital computers?.
Textbook accounts:
Karlheinz Seeger, Semiconductor Physics, Advanced texts in physics, Springer (2004) doi:10.1007/978-3-662-09855-4
Sheng San Li (ed.), Semiconductor Physical Electronics, Springer (2006) doi:10.1007/0-387-37766-2_4
See also:
Last revised on June 14, 2022 at 09:48:25. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.