Why is the mass of an electron moving in a semiconductor said to be an "effective mass"?
Answers
Answered by
0
effective mass (often denoted m*) is the mass that it seems to have when responding to forces, or the mass that it seems to have when interacting with other identical particles in a thermal distribution. One of the results from the band theory of solids is that the movement of particles in a periodic potential, over long distances larger than the lattice spacing, can be very different from their motion in a vacuum. The effective mass is a quantity that is used to simplify band structures by modeling the behavior of a free particle with that mass.
Similar questions
English,
7 months ago
Math,
7 months ago
Math,
7 months ago
Business Studies,
1 year ago
Chemistry,
1 year ago
Computer Science,
1 year ago
English,
1 year ago
Physics,
1 year ago