A vague discomfort at the thought of the chemical potential
is still characteristic of a physics education.
This intellectual gap is is due to the obscurity
of the writings of J. Willard Gibbs who
discovered and understood the matter 100 years ago.
C. Kittel; Preface to his book: Introduction to Solid State Physics




The chemical potential

 
This module is registered in the "basic" part of the Semiconductor course, beause the chemical potential belongs to basic thermodynamics. However, people with a mostly physical background (like me) may often have learned exciting things like Bose-Einstein condensations and the Liouville theorem in their thermodynamics courses, but not overly much about chemical potentials and chemical equilibrium.
If you want to refresh your memory; the link will take you to the "Defects in Crystals" Hyperscript which contains in its "Advanced" part a detailed discussion of the chemical potential.

To index To index

go to 2.1.1 Essentials of the Free Electron Gas

go to 2.2.4 Simple Junctions and Devices

go to Alternative Derivation of the Einstein Relation

© H. Föll (Semiconductor - Script)