A band insulator has an integer number of completely filled energy bands, with the Fermi energy inside a positive band gap. At zero temperature, no arbitrarily low-energy charged excitation is then available.
If the minimum of the next energy band lies at or below the maximum of the nominally filled band, electrons can lower their energy by occupying the next band and leaving holes in the first. The resulting partially filled bands prevent a band-insulating state.

Ancestors (7)

  1. Band filling
  2. Energy band
  3. Bloch theorem
  4. Quantum theory
  5. Branch of physics
  6. Physics
  7. Home

View article source

Discussion (0)

New discussion

There are no discussions about this article yet.

Articles by others on the same topic (0)

There are currently no matching articles.
See all articles in the same topic Create my own version