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Official University of Illinois semiconductor-device lecture slides. Slide 26 distinguishes carrier-counting, conductivity and cyclotron effective masses, and gives the multiple-valley density-of-states effective mass for silicon. This is useful when interpreting a supplied scalar mass in an elementary semiconductor model.

Assume thermal equilibrium, a three-dimensional nondegenerate semiconductor, one parabolic conduction extremum and one parabolic valence extremum, with two spin states in each. Use the supplied effective masses as scalar density-of-states parameters. With conduction energy $E=E_c+\epsilon$, state counting gives the per-volume density of statesSince $E_c-\mu \gg k_{B}T$, replace the Fermi-Dirac distribution by its Boltzmann factor. Using $x=\epsilon /(k_{B}T)$ and the supplied integral,The electron hole occupation is $1-f(E)$ in the valence band. Applying the same integration below $E_v$ givesTheir product cancels the chemical potential, giving the semiconductor mass-action lawThus, for masses expressed in ordinary mass units,The labels $B,C$ in this last box are exponents, unrelated to the magnetic field or Curie constant above. Valley degeneracy or multiple valence bands must be included in the effective density of states, or absorbed into suitable density-of-states effective masses, not counted twice. Real silicon has anisotropic multiple valleys, so its conductivity mass is not automatically its density-of-states mass; the numerical answers below implement the paper's supplied scalar-mass model.^[ref]

The formula is not an identity for arbitrarily degenerate carriers. For a concrete counterexample, take $\mu -E_c=10k_{B}T$ while holes remain dilute. Fermi occupation gives $n/N_c\simeq 24.1$, whereas the Boltzmann replacement would give $e^{10}\simeq 22026$; the predicted product then differs by about three orders of magnitude. Separate electron and hole quasi-Fermi levels out of equilibrium would also prevent the cancellation used above.