EEE539 Solid State Electronics

Classical Statistical Mechanics Predictions

According to classical statistical mechanics, the
average energy per particle is

This means that the heat capacity for a system of N
particles equals to:

The experimental observations suggested values that
are 0.01 of the predicted one due to the following
two reasons:
1) Only the electrons with energy on the order of
3k
B
T/2 contribute to the conduction process.
Heat Capacity of the Electron Gas
T k U
B
2
3
=
B
Nk U
2
3
=
EEE539 Solid State Electronics
1) The fraction of these electrons equals to:


The result obtained with these corrections is in
agreement with the experimental findings.
Quantitative Results for C
el
To derive a quantitative expression that takes into
account the occupancy of the electronic states, we
start from:


We now multiply the identity given below with E
F
and
subtract from the above expression.


F F
T
T
B el B
T
T
Nk C T k N U 2 ~ ~
} }
= = A

0 0
) ( ) ( ) ( ) 0 ( ) (
F
E
dE E ED dE E f E ED U T U U
} }
= =

0 0
) ( ) ( ) (
F
E
dE E D dE E f E D N
EEE539 Solid State Electronics
This manipulation leads to:



The first term in the above expression is the energy
needed to bring an electron from E
F
to E>E
F
and the
second one is for promotion of electron from E to E
F
.
The heat capacity is then given by:



The total heat capacity, taking into account the electron
and the lattice contribution, equals to:
( ) ( )| |
} }
+ = A

F
F
E
E
F F
dE E D E f E E dE E f E D E E U
0
) ( ) ( 1 ) ( ) (
( ) ( )
F
T
T
B B F
dT
df
F F F el
Nk T k E D
dE E E E D dE E D
dT
df
E E C
2
2
1
2 2
3
1
0 0
) (
) ( ) (
t = t ~
}
~
}
=

3
AT T C + =
EEE539 Solid State Electronics
Note that the observed values for the coefficient g are of
the expected magnitude but do not agree very
closely with the value calculated for free electrons
because of the following reasons:
1) The need of usage of the effective DOS mass for
electrons moving in a periodic potential
2) The interaction of electrons with phonons: electrons
polarize the lattice and tecd to drag nearby ions
3) The interaction of conduction electrons with
themselves
Thermal conductivity
Note that in analogy with the lattice conductivity, the
thermal conductivity equals to:

m
T Nk
F el F el el
B
v C l v C
t t
= t = = k
2 2
3
1
2
3
1
3
1
EEE539 Solid State Electronics
The Wiedemann-Frantz Law
The Wiedemann-Frantz law relates the electrical to the
thermal conductivity, i.e.:



2
2
2
2
3 3
|
.
|

\
|
t
= =
|
.
|

\
|
t
=
o
k
e
k
L LT T
e
k
B B
el
el
Lorentz number
EEE539 Solid State Electronics
Thermal Conductivity
The thermal conductivity coefficient is defined with
respect to the steady-state flow of heat down a
temperature gradient, i.e.

To arrive at the expression for the thermal conductivity,
we start from

where

Substituting back the above results leads to
dx
dT
U
J k =
T c nv U nv J
x x U
A = A =
t = = A
x
dx
dT
x
dx
dT
v l T
Cvl v nc c v n J
dx
dT
dx
dT
x U
3
1
2
3
1
2
= t = t =