Materials Classification and Properties Metals, Ceramics, and Semiconductors

NANO 52 Foothill College

Properties of Materials
Physical Mechanical Chemical Thermal Electrical Optical

Physical Properties
Strength Ductility Melting point Glass transition Density

Mechanical Properties
Stress strain behavior Strength Tensile properties Compression, shear, torsion Deformation Hardness

Chemical Properties
Acid - base Reactivity Corrosion Oxidation Passivation

Thermal Properties
Heat conductance Heat capacity Thermal expansion Annealing temperature (Melting point, softening point)

Electrical Properties
Electrical conductivity Electrical resistance/impedance

http://www.corrosionsource.com/

Metal Structure / Bonding

Metallic bonds All metals are made up of a vast collection of ions that are held together by metallic bonds. A metal atom has a positive nucleus with negative electrons outside of it. In a solid, each atom loses the outermost electron, which takes part in bonding. They form a lattice of regularly spaced positive ions. Each ion has no control over its bonding electron.

http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/pt/harvey/gcse/other.html

Examples of Ceramics
Clay, Minerals, Salts and Oxides Technical Ceramics can also be classified into three distinct material categories: Oxides: Alumina, zirconia Non-oxides: Carbides, borides, nitrides Composites: Particulate reinforced, combinations of oxides and non-oxides.

Ionic Bonding in Ceramics

Ceramic materials are formed from ionic bonds within their constituent atoms, oxides and salts. Ionic bonds are not nearly as ductile as metals, causing ceramics to be brittle.

Metallic vs. Ionic Bonding

Much easier to deform materials with metallic than with ionic bonding. Why?

Sliding atom planes over each other (deformation) very unfavorable energetically in ionic solids! metals are ductile & ceramics (ionic) are brittle

Semiconductors

Semiconductors

http://worldwatts.com/silicon_semiconductor.html

Semiconductors
In solid state physics and related applied fields, the band gap is the energy difference between the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band in insulators and semiconductors.

Semiconductors
The ease with which electrons in a semiconductor can be excited from the valence band to the conduction band depends on the band gap between the bands, and it is the size of this energy bandgap that serves as an arbitrary dividing line (roughly 4 eV) between semiconductors and insulators. Electrons excited to the conduction band also leave behind electron holes, or unoccupied states in the valence band. Both the conduction band electrons and the valence band holes contribute to electrical conductivity. The holes themselves don't actually move, but a neighboring electron can move to fill the hole, leaving a hole at the place it has just come from, and in this way the holes appear to move, and the holes behave as if they were actual positively charged particles.