Thursday, August 22, 2013

Doping Semiconductors


We just learned about what a Anode and Cathode are.

We learned a while back that semiconductors are chemicals that do not conduct electricity very well.

Some scientists discovered a crazy thing, that if you mix up a semiconductor with another type of chemical,
then when you zap it with electricity it becomes a good conductor!

This is called doping or adding impurities into the semiconductor.

Remember we said silicon was a semiconductor.
The chemical arsenic can be added to silicon for doping.

silicon
(from: wikipedia - silicon)

arsenic
(from: wikipedia - arsenic)