Types Of Semiconductors

 As the name says “semi”, which means it is not fully a conductor nor fully a non-conductor. Semiconductors, thus, are materials which have conductivity more than a non-conductor or also known as Insulators but have less conductivity as compared to Conductors. Conductors are mostly metals like silver, gold, copper, aluminium, lead, steel and Iron, while Insulators are glass, rubber, porcelain and ceramic.

Some Examples of Semiconductors: Gallium arsenide, germanium, and silicon are some of the most commonly used semiconductors. Silicon is used in electronic circuit fabrication, and gallium arsenide is used in solar cells, laser diodes, etc.

Types of Semiconductors

Semiconductors can be classified as:

• Intrinsic Semiconductor
•  Extrinsic Semiconductor

Intrinsic Semiconductor

Intrinsic semiconductors are called the purest form of semiconductors because there is no doping method involved here. Hence, Intrinsic semiconductors are also called as undoped or i-type semiconductors. The conductivity of Intrinsic semiconductor depends upon the number of holes and electrons present in the atom itself, which are equal in numbers. The conductivity obtained by active electrons passing through these holes is called Intrinsic conductivity.

Extrinsic Semiconductor

Extrinsic semiconductors work exactly opposite of Intrinsic semiconductors. In this process a small number of suitable replacement atoms called Impurities are added to the pure semiconductor known as doping. During this process,  due to the presence of more electrons the conductivity increases. 

An extrinsic semiconductor can be further classified into:

• N-type Semiconductor 
• P-type Semiconductor

N-Type Semiconductor:

In this type of semiconductor,  impurities or also called as pentavalent are added in a pure semiconductor through the process called doping. When a semiconductor is doped with negative charged electrons, the number of electrons in that particular atom increases. But the number of holes in that atom remains the same. As a result, the negative charge of that atom increases thereby forming the name as n-type semiconductor, where “n” stands for negative. The holes in n-type semiconductor are minority carriers and electrons as major carriers.

P-Type Semiconductor: 

In p-type semiconductor, the pentavalente is added to a pure semiconductor in the doping process. But here in p-type instead of electrons, holes have been added as an impurity. As a result the positive charge of that particular atom increases thereby giving the name as p-type semiconductor.

Applications of Semiconductors:

1. In Electronic Consumer goods such as mobile phones, calculators, laptops, refrigerators and microwaves.
2. Semiconductors can also be observed in manual cars.
3. Semiconductors are also used in Light Emitting Diode (LED’s)

Conclusion

We can conclude that this invention is a broad spectrum idea used everywhere, even from the small light bulb to big nuclear reactors. Several researches is still ongoing, and semiconductors are used in every experiment. Now we know why and where semiconductors are used, and also we know the applications in real life where we come across semiconductors.