Among conductors, Insulators and semiconductors why mostly semiconductors are preferred in electronic devices?
In order to effectively reply your query lets see the definitions first
Conductors: They are the ones with large number of free electrons with greater mobility at room temperature
Insulator: They are the ones with less number or free electrons with highly restricted mobility at room temperature
Semiconductor: They are the ones with moderate free electron with controllable mobility at room temperature(now moderate means freely or loosely bounded electrons is not as high as conductor nor as low as insulators) and (mobility this the important factor which decides upon the amount of conduction high the mobility high the conduction higher the energy)
So semiconductor mobility (conductivity) can be controlled at room temperature by creating the potential gradient (voltage potential) and then varying the amount of applied voltage and secondarily by carring out the required doping we can control the freely available electrons (amplifiers) and all this could be easily done at room temperature hence semi-conductor finds wide application
Dear Sir,
More in general:
- Conductors always conduct electricity
- Isolators do not conduct electricity most of the time. (unless their operating voltage, temperature is exceeded.)
- For semiconductors, whether they conduct or not, depends on what I can call 'boundary conditions'. I mean, there are a number of ways to modulate whether a semiconductor conducts or not:
+ doping
+ junctions
+ electric field
+ light
+ May be more.
These materials are so interesting for electronic circuits, because of the relative ease with which their conducting or not can be modulated. Practical circuits exploit this to create various types of transistors (conduction modulated by current or voltage), diodes (conducts in one way, not in the other), photovoltaic cell (converts light energy into electric current), Hall element (voltage modulated by magnetic field), etcetera.
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