Semiconductors and Electronic Devices Test - 6

When p-n junction is reverse biased, the flow of current is due to drifting of minority charge carriers across the junction.

Explanation:Forbidden gap plays a major role for determining the electrical conductivity of material. Based on the forbidden gap materials are classified in to three types, they are : Insulators : The forbidden gap between the valence band and conduction band is very large in insulators. The energy gap of insulator is approximately equal to 15 electron volts (eV).Conductors: In a conductor, valence band and conduction band overlap each other. Therefore, there is no forbidden gap in a conductor.Semiconductors: In semiconductors, the forbidden gap between valence band and conduction band is very small. It has a forbidden gap of about 1 electron volt (eV).

Explanation:The electron theory states that all matter is composed of atoms and the atoms are composed of smaller particles called protons, electrons, and neutrons. The electrons orbit the nucleus which contains the protons and neutrons. It is the valence electrons that we are most concerned with in electricity. These are the electrons which are easiest to break loose from their parent atom. Normally, conductors have three or less valence electrons; insulators have five or more valence electrons; and semiconductors usually have four valence electrons.

Due to the reverse biasing, the width of the depletion region increases and current flowing through the diode is almost zero. In this case, electric field is almost zero at the middle of the depletion region.

A Full Wave Rectifier is a circuit, which converts an ac voltage into a pulsating dc voltage using both half cycles of the applied ac voltage. It uses two diodes of which one conducts during one half cycle while the other conducts during the other half cycle of the applied ac voltage.
During the positive half cycle of the input voltage, diode D1 becomes forward biased and D2 becomes reverse biased.Hence D1 conducts and D2 remains OFF. The load current flows through D1 and the voltage drop across RL will be equal to the input voltage.During the negative half cycle of the input voltage, diode D1 becomes reverse biased and D2 becomes forward biased.Hence D1 remains OFF and D2 conducts. The load current flows through D2 and the voltage drop across RL will be equal to the input voltage.

Explanation:The holes are just the abscence of a electron in a energy band. But its easier to describe the abscence of a electron as a single moving positive charge than it is to describe the motion of all the other electrons in the band.In a band you have N electrons. Remove one of those electrons(by for instance p-doping) and you have N-1 electrons left. Now you can either choose to describe this with the behavior of those N-1 electrons. Or you can choose to describe it as if there is one single hole moving around in the band.So mathematicly the holes behave just like a positivly charged electron.

Explanation:A pure semiconductor is called intrinsic semiconductor, e.g., silicon, germanium. The presence of the mobile charge carriers is the intrinsic property of the material. At room temperature, some covalent bonds are broken and electrons are made free. The absence of electron in the covalent bond form hole.The electrical conduction is by means of mobile electrons and holes. Hole act as positive charge, because it can attract an electron. If some other bond is broken and the electron thus freed fills this hole(vacancy), it seems as though the hole is moving.Actually an electron is travelling in opposite direction. In a pure(intrinsic) semiconductor, the number of holes is equal to the number of free electrons.

Explanation:A region of values of energy that electrons in an ideal crystal (without defects) cannot have. In semiconductors the forbidden band separating the valence band and the conduction band is usually considered. In this case the energy difference between the lower level (bottom) of the conduction band and the upper level (ceiling) of the valence band is called the width of the forbidden band.

In metals, scattering increases with temperature and hence the flow of electrons is restricted. In semiconductors, the number of charge carriers increases with temperature which overcomes the effect of increasing scattering and hence the resistivity of semiconductors decreases with an increase in temperature but that of metals increases.

We know, a piece of copper is a metal while that of germanium is a semiconducting material. For metals resistance increases with increase in  temperature. The semiconductor has a negative temperature coefficient of resistance. Hence, when it is cooled its resistance increases.