The energy required for electron to jump the forbidden band for germanium at room temperature in the intrinsic semiconductor is eV.

Question

Accepted Answer

(1) 0.72. Idea: jumping the forbidden band means lifting an electron out of the valence band, across the energy gap, into the conduction band. The energy that costs is the band gap E_g. For germanium at room temperature E_g=0.72 eV; for silicon it is 1.1 eV and for diamond about 5.4 eV. Because germanium's gap is the narrowest of those, thermal energy at room temperature does lift a small number of its electrons across, each leaving a hole behind -- that is what makes intrinsic germanium a semiconductor rather than an insulator. So the energy required is 0.72 eV.

The energy required for electron to jump the forbidden band for germanium at room temperature in the intrinsic semiconductor is ________ eV.

Step-by-step solution

Why the other options are wrong