Doping - Part 1

[00:00:00]Pure silicon is a terrible conductor, so how do we turn it into the brain of every computer and smartphone? The answer is doping. Doping is the process of adding a tiny amount of impurity to a pure semiconductor to increase its ability to conduct electricity. Think of pure silicon like plain water. Plain water barely conducts electricity, but add a pinch of salt and suddenly it conducts much better. Doping does exactly that for silicon. We add a tiny controlled amount of a foreign material [music] into the silicon crystal and that small addition changes everything. Now pure silicon has four valence electrons and forms a perfectly balanced covalent bond structure. Every electron is paired up, every bond is satisfied, and there are very few free electrons to carry current. That balance is exactly what we are going to disturb with doping. But what happens when we add that impurity atom inside? What types of impurities do we add? And how does each one create a completely different type of semiconductor? That is exactly what we are covering in part two. Can we reach 50 comments for part two? Comment part two below.