An electrical conductor supports mobile charge carriers and hence an electric current under a field. In a band description, a partially filled band or available overlapping bands supply nearby accessible states. The contrast with a band insulator depends on band filling as well as spectral gaps; semiconductors provide carriers through thermal excitation or doping.
An ideal planar conductor is an equipotential boundary in electrostatics. The electric field just outside is normal to it, while the electric field inside its metal vanishes. If grounded and infinite, the method of images implements the boundary by reflected opposite electric charges.
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