Heat and Thermodynamics

13.14 Application of Fermi–Dirac Distribution Law To Electron Gas

Fermi–Dirac statistics has many applications in studying electrical and thermal conductivities, thermoelectricity, thermionic and photoelectric effects, specific heat of metals, etc. on the assumption that metals contain free electrons constituting like a perfect gas known as electron gas. Though many scientists like Drude, Lorentz and others worked on this, but Sommerfeld in 1928 revived quantum electron theory of metals. The conductivity of metals is due to the presence of free electrons inside a metallic conductor moving freely inside them colliding with fixed atoms behaving like an electron gas. These are called fermions because electrons obey Pauli's exclusion principle is ...