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Insulators made from porcelain rich in alumina are used where high mechanical strength is a criterion. Porcelain has a dielectric strength of about 4–10 kV/mm. [8] Glass has a higher dielectric strength, but it attracts condensation and the thick irregular shapes needed for insulators are difficult to cast without internal strains. [9]
Aside from fuses, most conductors in the real world are operated far below this limit, however. For example, household wiring is usually insulated with PVC insulation that is only rated to operate to about 60 °C, therefore, the current in such wires must be limited so that it never heats the copper conductor above 60 °C, causing a risk of fire.
Lightning is an example of plasma present at Earth's surface. 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.
A compound semiconductor is a semiconductor compound composed of chemical elements of at least two different species. These semiconductors form for example in periodic table groups 13–15 (old groups III–V), for example of elements from the Boron group (old group III, boron, aluminium, gallium, indium) and from group 15 (old group V, nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony, bismuth).
A pure semiconductor, however, is not very useful, as it is neither a very good insulator nor a very good conductor. However, one important feature of semiconductors (and some insulators, known as semi-insulators) is that their conductivity can be increased and controlled by doping with impurities and gating with electric fields. Doping and ...
The most effective conductors are usually metals because they can be described fairly accurately by the free electron model in which electrons delocalize from the atomic nuclei, leaving positive ions surrounded by a cloud of free electrons. [24] Examples of good conductors include copper, aluminum, and silver. Wires in electronics are often ...
A topological insulator is an insulator for the same reason a "trivial" (ordinary) insulator is: there exists an energy gap between the valence and conduction bands of the material. But in a topological insulator, these bands are, in an informal sense, "twisted", relative to a trivial insulator. [4]
Undoped conjugated polymers are semiconductors or insulators. In such compounds, the energy gap can be > 2 eV, which is too great for thermally activated conduction. Therefore, undoped conjugated polymers, such as polythiophenes, polyacetylenes only have a low electrical conductivity of around 10 −10 to 10 −8 S/cm. Even at a very low level ...