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Chemistry · Glossary

What is Semiconductors and insulators?

Also known as: semiconductor · insulator

Definition 22.5 University Chemistry — Year 3 · Chapter 22 — Solid-State Chemistry: Bands, Defects and Semiconductors

A semiconductor is a solid with a band gap small enough (up to about 3 eV3\,\mathrm{eV}) that a measurable number of electrons cross it at ordinary temperature or after doping; an insulator has a gap so large that it does not conduct.

Band filling at zero temperature (filled levels shaded). A metal has a partly filled band and its Fermi level inside it; a semiconductor and an insulator have a full valence band and an empty conduction band, with the Fermi level in the gap, which is narrow in the first and wide in the second.
Band filling at zero temperature (filled levels shaded). A metal has a partly filled band and its Fermi level inside it; a semiconductor and an insulator have a full valence band and an empty conduction band, with the Fermi level in the gap, which is narrow in the first and wide in the second.
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