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In other media, any stream of charged objects (ions, for example) may constitute an electric current. To provide a definition of current independent of the type of charge carriers, conventional current is defined as moving in the same direction as the positive charge flow. So, in metals where the charge carriers (electrons) are negative ...
Electric current is the flow of electric charge through an object. The most common charge carriers are the positively charged proton and the negatively charged electron. The movement of any of these charged particles constitutes an electric current.
Current flow can be understood in two forms: as negatively charged electrons, and as positively charged electron deficiencies called holes. These charges and holes are understood in terms of quantum physics. The building material is most often a crystalline semiconductor. [29] [30]
An electron dropping to a lower orbit emits a photon equal to the energy difference between the orbits. By 1914, experiments by physicists Ernest Rutherford, Henry Moseley, James Franck and Gustav Hertz had largely established the structure of an atom as a dense nucleus of positive charge surrounded by lower-mass electrons. [51]
Diffusion current is a current in a semiconductor caused by the diffusion of charge carriers (electrons and/or electron holes). This is the current which is due to the transport of charges occurring because of non-uniform concentration of charged particles in a semiconductor.
Summarizing, for any truly ohmic device having resistance R, V/I = ΔV/ΔI = R for any applied voltage or current or for the difference between any set of applied voltages or currents. The I–V curves of four devices: Two resistors, a diode, and a battery. The two resistors follow Ohm's law: The plot is a straight line through the origin.
Consider a sample with cross-sectional area A, length l and an electron concentration of n. The current carried by each electron must be , so that the total current density due to electrons is given by: = = Using the expression for gives = A similar set of equations applies to the holes, (noting that the charge on a hole is positive).
Later, he proposed the name electron for this unit. At the time, the particle we now call the electron was not yet discovered and the difference between the particle electron and the unit of charge electron was still blurred. Later, the name electron was assigned to the particle and the unit of charge e lost its name.