Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-condensed-matter-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2017/4/d/ii/solution
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2017 4 d ii Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
Take uncompensated donor impurities and initially approximate them as ionized. Charge neutrality then gives , while the semiconductor mass-action law gives . Solving the quadratic without prematurely discarding minority carriers,Since , the hole density isUse the conduction population to locate the chemical potential:It moves toward the conduction band but remains about below it, so the mobile electrons are nondegenerate. Despite the donor binding energy being comparable with , the large number of available conduction states makes ionization almost complete at this dilute doping. For a singly occupied two-spin donor, , with . The inferred value is , confirming the approximation to much better than one percent. Including this small correction raises the hole density only to about .
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