Practice portal › Semiconductor Electronics › Energy Bands and Classification of Solids
Asked in CBSE AIPMT 1988 · Conductors, insulators and semiconductors
Idea: conduction needs electrons in the conduction band, and at 0 K there is no thermal energy to put them there.
Silicon's valence band is completely full at absolute zero and its conduction band completely empty.
A full band carries no net current, so the crystal cannot conduct at all.
At 0 K silicon therefore behaves as an insulator; it is only at higher temperatures that it becomes a semiconductor.
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