March 2014
Intermediate to advanced
624 pages
26h 33m
English
In Chapter 2 we found that electrons are restricted to sets of discrete energy levels within atoms. Large gaps exist in the energy scale in which no energy states are available. In a similar fashion, electrons in solids are restricted to certain energies and are not allowed at other energies. The basic difference between the case of an electron in a solid and that of an electron in an isolated atom is that in the solid the electron has a range, or band, of available energies. The discrete energy levels of the isolated atom spread into bands of energies in the solid because in the solid the wavefunctions of electrons in neighboring atoms overlap, and an electron is not necessarily localized at a particular ...