Tagged Questions

3
votes
1answer
38 views

Dopant concentration and changes in band gap energy

Thanks to this lovely website, I was able to pop out reasonable values for my band gap energies from a translucent material. As expected, I found a decrease in band gap energy due to my treatments. ...
1
vote
1answer
48 views

What is the reasoning behind hole carriers being able to carry heat?

In the Peltier effect, we consider charge carriers being able to carry heat. As for electrons or ions, this attitude makes sense, since external electric potential drives particles with mass in a ...
2
votes
2answers
69 views

Are electronic wavefunctions in band gap insulators localized? is a single-particle picture sufficient in this case?

I am having trouble understanding the physics of band gap insulators. Usually in undergrad solid state physics one looks at non-interacting electrons in a periodic potential, with no disorder. Then, ...
4
votes
0answers
101 views

Intuition on topologically nontrivial 2D-band structures?

I want to get more intuition on topologically nontrivial band structures. There's this popular 2D two-band model for a topological insulator where $H=\sum_{k}h(\boldsymbol{k})$ (see Qi, Hughes, and ...
2
votes
0answers
45 views

Why does silicon have an indirect gap?

Is there an intuitive explanation as to why silicon has an indirect gap? I have heard that this can explained using pseudopotentials.
1
vote
1answer
458 views

Effective Mass and Fermi Velocity of Electrons in Graphene:

In graphene, we have (in the low energy limit) the linear energy-momentum dispersion relation: $E=\hbar v_{\rm{F}}|k|$. This expression arises from a tight-binding model, in fact $E =\frac{3\hbar ...
1
vote
1answer
105 views

Does anyone know the difference and relation between $k\cdot p$ method and tight binding (TB) method?

Among the methods of calculating energy bands for crystals, first-principles method is the most accurate. Besides first principles, two commonly used modeling methods are the $k\cdot p$ method and ...
2
votes
1answer
327 views

Energy band diagram of a system of Silicon Quantum dots

Suppose that we have a system of Silicon nanoparticles embedded in ZnO dielectric matrix. i'm thinking about how to construct the energy band structure of this system , suppose that we already have ...
4
votes
1answer
322 views

Can surface dipoles/charges change the work function of a metal?

As typically drawn in simplified band diagrams (see picture below), the metal Fermi Level is shown as the top of the conduction band, with the entire band filled. In many situations, including ...