Finding the Energy Bands of Silicon
| Autor: | Walter A. Harrison |
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| Rok vydání: | 2009 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Physics in Perspective. 11:198-208 |
| ISSN: | 1422-6960 1422-6944 |
| Popis: | The energy bands of semiconductors were known only qualitatively at the time of the invention of the transistor in 1947. The real bands became known only in 1954 when Frank Herman used a combination of experimental information and W. Conyers Herring’s Orthogonalized Plane Wave method to propose essentially correct band structures for silicon and germanium. Further understanding came with better descriptions of the effects of electron-electron interaction and the simplification allowed by pseudopotential theory, developments that also reflected on the electronic structure of metals. Empirical pseudopotentials actually hid a misunderstanding of the effects of electron-electron interactions in semiconductors. These effects in the end made it necessary to describe the ground-state properties with different energy bands than are appropriate for describing the electronic excitations. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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