Caroline's weblog
Friday July 21, 2006
Solid State Modeling
Have you ever used a gameboy, a cell phone, a computer? Have you ever admired a diamond ring? These things are made possible by the concepts you will be studying about in this lab. The technology is made possible by the use of semiconductors - this is a atomic material that has properties between a conductor (like iron) and a insulator (like styrofoam). Here is a cool website where you can look at the the unit cell of common semiconductors - such as Silicon (Si), Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), and Zinc Sulfide (ZnS).
Diamonds are also an example of a crystalline solid.
This is a website where you can see the structure of diamond.Diamonds are very hard substances - people can even cut things with them, such as bone!
Speaking of biology now, protein structures are also determined by x-ray crystallography, which is a technique that uses the same theories (bond angles and lengths) as this lab does.
For this lab, it would be wise of you to FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS CAREFULLY!
The problem that I have seen in the past people having with this lab is that they can not "see" inside their unit cell to determine how many of each type of atom there are inside. If you have this problem, take a layer off, or build another layer so that you can answer the questions properly.
For the post lab one equation that is good to know is for the packing efficiency.
Packing efficiency = (Volume of atoms in one unit cell / Volume of one unit cell) * 100%.
Posted at 12:26PM Jul 21, 2006 by CHRISTIAN, CAROLINE in General | Comments[7]
This is a personal weblog, I do not speak for my employer.