Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2024/paper-2/a9/c/solution
Past exam of the chemistry A course of the University of Cambridge 2024 Paper 2 A9 c Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-20
The reciprocal-space volume inside a spherical Fermi surface is . The first Brillouin zone has volume divided by the primitive real-space cell volume:Since ,Numerically,The half-zone volume reflects one electron per primitive cell and two spin states per Bloch wavevector: a completely filled single band would require two electrons per cell. Volume alone does not establish containment inside the polyhedral zone. Here the nearest reciprocal-lattice points are of type , so their zone faces are a distance from the origin. The free-electron radius obeysso these ideal monovalent spheres fit inside the first zone. Real band structure can distort a Fermi surface into zone-face contacts or necks; that is additional physics beyond the free sphere.
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