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In electrostatics, a perfect conductor is an idealized model for real conducting materials. The defining property of a perfect conductor is that static electric field and the charge density both vanish in its interior. If the conductor has excess charge, it accumulates as an infinitesimally thin layer of surface charge. An external electric ...
A perfect conductor has infinite conductivity, σ = ∞, while a perfect dielectric is a material that has no conductivity at all, σ = 0; this latter case, of real-valued permittivity (or complex-valued permittivity with zero imaginary component) is also associated with the name lossless media. [18]
In solid-state physics, the valence band and conduction band are the bands closest to the Fermi level, and thus determine the electrical conductivity of the solid. In nonmetals, the valence band is the highest range of electron energies in which electrons are normally present at absolute zero temperature, while the conduction band is the lowest range of vacant electronic states.
Typically, lightning discharges 30,000 amperes at up to 100 million volts, and emits light, radio waves, and X-rays. [17] Plasma temperatures in lightning might approach 30,000 kelvin (29,727 °C) (53,540 °F), and electron densities may exceed 10 24 m −3. Plasmas are very good conductors and electric potentials play an important role.
The main properties of conductors are: [26] The electric field is zero inside a perfect conductor. Because charges are free to move in a conductor, when they are disturbed by an external electric field they rearrange themselves such that the field that their configuration produces exactly cancels the external electric field inside the conductor.
The ampacity of a conductor, that is, the amount of current it can carry, is related to its electrical resistance: a lower-resistance conductor can carry a larger value of current. The resistance, in turn, is determined by the material the conductor is made from (as described above) and the conductor's size.
When light is absorbed by a material such as a semiconductor, the number of free electrons and holes increases, resulting in increased electrical conductivity. [2] To cause excitation, the light that strikes the semiconductor must have enough energy to raise electrons across the band gap , or to excite the impurities within the band gap.
Different fields of application have different definitions for the term. All the meanings are very similar in concept: In chemistry, the transmission coefficient refers to a chemical reaction overcoming a potential barrier; in optics and telecommunications it is the amplitude of a wave transmitted through a medium or conductor to that of the incident wave; in quantum mechanics it is used to ...