Talk:Thermal ionization

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semiconductors too

At some point this article could be generalized to include semiconductor physics. The physics of thermal ionization of atoms in a hot vacuum is closely related to the thermal ionization of dopant atoms in a semiconductor. The differences are

In semiconductor the ions are locked into a lattice, not free to roam about, and so complex plasma phenomena such as Debye layers don't occur (anyway such physics is not discussed in this article).
The ionization energies of shallow donor dopants can be very low, (measured in millielectronvolts). Electron affinities of shallow acceptor dopants are quite high (close to band gap). As a result one expects practically all dopants to be ionized in a semiconductor even at room temperature.
In the semiconductor the electrostatic environment is a bit more complex to think about because there is also a valence band, and so negatively ionized dopants can be compensated with electron holes.

Anyway, things like Langmuir-Saha equation appear in both cases. Nanite (talk) 18:29, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]