conductor and semiconductor

difference between conductor and semiconductor

why cant a conductor can be used instead of semiconductor in making ICs??

plzz explain

gud semiconductor

a very nice question ????
answer is the BAND GAP ENERGY DIFFERENCE IS very less in semiconductors (near about 1eV) and very large in conductors.(about 6 -7 eV).so electrons can go very easily from one band to another i.e. from conduction band to valence band or vice versa. FOR MORE DETAILS U CAN refer to the book "INTEGRATED ELECTRONICS" by MILLMAN -HALKIAS, CHAPTER 1

the different between semiconductor and conductor

As was stated by bhatt_tanmay difference in band gap energy.. this is the 1st.. and the 2nd, electronic industry today can't get 2 type of conductors (n- & p-).

bhatt_tanmay said:

a very nice question ????
answer is the BAND GAP ENERGY DIFFERENCE IS very less in semiconductors (near about 1eV) and very large in conductors.(about 6 -7 eV).so electrons can go very easily from one band to another i.e. from conduction band to valence band or vice versa. FOR MORE DETAILS U CAN refer to the book "INTEGRATED ELECTRONICS" by MILLMAN -HALKIAS, CHAPTER 1

Click to expand...

For conductors Energy bandgap overlaps, its not 6-7eV..Please verify ur post..
For insulators its greater than 5eV and for Semiconductors its in the range of 1eV...

why cant a conductor can be used instead of semiconductor in making ICs??

plzz explain

Click to expand...

When we look at IC technology, MOSFET is the building block, which acts more likely as a switch, Semiconductors property aid this functionality of MOSFET, as its bandgap falls in the range of 1-2eV, electrons from Valence band upon excitation can reach the conduction band and helps in conduction...

The name is self explanatory - "Semi-Conductor" It is not a conductor..but it can be a conductor upon external force..

Lets take MOSFET construction.. Even if there is a voltage difference between Drain and Source, conduction can be controlled by Gate voltage. Gate voltage controls the ON and OFF state of MOSFET. In case if we use a conductor, if there is a voltage difference between Drain and Source as the channel is conductive material even without the controlling Gate voltage the MOSFET will be in ON state always...

Hope it helps..[/b]

if you use conductor how will you control it(i mean the device)???? also given the fact that at room temperature most of the electrons are in the conduction band....

Let us imagine that we have a piece of a material with a controllable resistance, i.e., it can be near zero as a a conductor or a metal wire, or can it be near infinity, as the isolators, a semiconductor is that, a material which resistance can be changed either to grow or to decrease depending on the controlling variable, e.g., current or voltage or even charge, this make them -the ability to control in situ their resistance- adequate to IC integration, becuae using control signal one can made many features such as amplifying, switching, etc....

Conductors are conductive at all signal conditions whereas semiconductors are conductance modulation devices.

there a simple answer
u know conductor and semiconductor
so i feel u know that the conduction and valence band in metal overlap
but in semicond, they are seperated by few ev energy level

so we can use semi conductor as conducting or non conducting device by supplying some energy but we cant do so in metal as the bands overlap. so a seiconductor can be used s sswith depending on the energy to impart to its electrons but metal has always a property of conducting. so dual behavior of semiconductor makes it gud candidate to support binary or boolean logic but poor metal has only one state which cant be used to implement logic abhityagi85@gmail.com