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Types of Semiconductors

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Intrinsic semiconductors are highly pure materials with no impurities. At absolute zero, these semiconductors behave as perfect insulators because all the valence electrons are bound, and the conduction band is empty, disallowing electrical conduction. The Fermi level is a concept used to describe the probability of occupancy of energy levels by electrons at thermal equilibrium. In intrinsic semiconductors, the Fermi level is positioned at the midpoint of the energy gap at absolute zero. When...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 24, 2026

Probing C84-embedded Si Substrate Using Scanning Probe Microscopy and Molecular Dynamics

Probing C₈₄-embedded Si Substrate Using Scanning Probe Microscopy and Molecular Dynamics

Published on: September 28, 2016

Conductive molecular silicon.

Rebekka S Klausen¹, Jonathan R Widawsky, Michael L Steigerwald

¹Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, United States.

Journal of the American Chemical Society

|February 23, 2012

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers synthesized oligosilanes to study silicon's electronic properties. They found that silicon's sigma bonds conduct electricity similarly to carbon's pi bonds, impacting semiconductor conductivity.

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Fabrication and Characterization of High-Q Silicon Nitride Membrane Resonators

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Published on: August 8, 2025

Area of Science:

Materials Science
Condensed Matter Physics
Organic Chemistry

Background:

Bulk silicon, fundamental to information technology, has a simple electronic structure based on Si-Si sigma bonds.
Diamond shares silicon's lattice structure but exhibits vastly different electronic properties, highlighting the importance of bonding.
Understanding silicon's conductivity at the molecular level is crucial for advancing semiconductor technology.

Purpose of the Study:

To synthesize and electrically characterize oligosilanes, molecules featuring interacting Si-Si sigma bonds.
To compare the single-molecule conductance of oligosilanes with that of alkanes.
To investigate the role of sigma conjugation in the electrical conductivity of silicon-based materials.

Main Methods:

Utilized scanning tunneling microscope-based break-junction technique for single-molecule electrical measurements.
Synthesized a class of oligosilane molecules with varying chain lengths.
Measured and analyzed the conductance decay with increasing molecular length.

Main Results:

Oligosilanes exhibit exponential decay in molecular conductance with increasing chain length.
The observed decay constant (β = 0.27 ± 0.01 Å(-1)) is comparable to that of conjugated carbon-carbon pi bonds.
This indicates significant charge transport through sigma bonds in silicon.

Conclusions:

Sigma conjugation in silicon is a critical factor influencing its electrical conductivity.
Oligosilanes serve as a model system to understand charge transport in silicon.
The findings have implications for the design of novel silicon-based electronic materials and devices.