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Clockwise from top: A chip, an LED and a transistor are all made from semiconductor material. See more electronics parts pictures.
Semiconductors have had a monumental impact on our society. You find semiconductors at the heart of microprocessor chips as well as transistors. Anything that's computerized or uses radio waves depends on semiconductors. Clockwise from top: A chip, an LED and a transistor are all made from semiconductor material. See more electronics parts pictures.
Today, most semiconductor chips and transistors are created with silicon. You may have heard expressions like "Silicon Valley" and the "silicon economy," and that's why -- silicon is the heart of any electronic device.
A diode is the simplest possible semiconductor device, and is therefore an excellent beginning point if you want to understand how semiconductors work. In this article, you'll learn what a semiconductor is, how doping works and how a diode can be created using semiconductors. But first, let's take a close look at silicon.
Silicon is a very common element -- for example, it is the main element in sand and quartz. If you look "silicon" up in the periodic table, you will find that it sits next to aluminum, below carbon and above germanium.
Silicon sits next to aluminum and below carbon in the periodic table. |
In a silicon lattice, all silicon atoms bond perfectly to four neighbors, leaving no free electrons to conduct electric current. This makes a silicon crystal an insulator rather than a conductor. |
Inside Electronics |
But you can change all this through a process called doping.
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