Monday, October 1, 2007

Semiconducting behaviour....


Wondering about semiconductor technology - i mean the chemistry and physics behind it! Every bit of semiconductor has to do something with the bond energy and this specifies the specificity of compounds exhibiting semiconducting behaviour. Silicon has four electrons in its valence shell. This gives it a probability - little less than 50% to form a negative ion and little above 0.5 to form a positive ions(due to the distance of the valence shell from the nucleus)! This makes it loose the electron with the rise of temperature. This is how semiconductors were born! Carbon has a similar structure of the valence shell but the orbital is close to the nucleus making the probability 0.5 to form both positive and negative ions! Hence they go completely into a new class of compounds called "organics" which are omnipresent!

Also. it's worth while to remember that carbon and silicon are found abundant on earth! I still believe that there would be a place somewhere in universe which would encourage something other than the "OCTECT Rule"! There, silicon and carbon will be a reactive element and something else would posses the characters of C and Si! It's really wonderful to think of it!

Diclaimer: Every bit of this article is hypothetical. Still working on proving the statements made!

No comments: