My watch list
my.chemeurope.com  
Login  

Metal-insulator transition



Metal-insulator transitions refer to changes in the transport properties of a given material. Roughly speaking, materials can be classified as metals, allowing for good conductivity of electric charges, and as insulators, where conductivity of charges is quickly suppressed. In some materials, most notably semiconductors, changing their ambient conditions by, e.g. applying pressure or gate voltages, one can tune the transport properties from metallic to insulating or vice versa. These materials are thus useful as controlling devices in electric and electronic circuits.

Theoretical understanding of metal-insulator transitions elucidates roughly 3 classes of metal-insulator transitions. Doping a material can change its internal electronic structure, giving rise to or eliminating band gaps. Materials in which a band gap prohibits electronic conductivity are call band-gap insulators. Electron-electron interaction can also lead to the opening of an interaction-induced gap, the so-called Mott-Hubbard gap. Disorder in the material composition can lead to Anderson localization which prohibits conductivity. This is a disorder-induced metal-insulator transition even without any band gap.


 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Metal-insulator_transition". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.
Your browser is not current. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 does not support some functions on Chemie.DE