Without too much of the fanfare the terminology used to identify various classes of semiconductors is gradually evolving as the semiconductor landscape is changing. In terms of crystallographic structure for instance, terms "ordered" and "disordered" semiconductors are often being used instead of the more traditional terms "crystalline" and "non-crystalline" (amorphous) semiconductors. As the latter refer to the three-dimensional arrangements of atoms and to the corresponding geometry of physical interatomic bonds in the material, they do not adequately reflect the nature of organic semiconductors, for instance.
My experience shows that in order to cover the entire semiconductor field these days it is helpful to add a sub-class of "nano-ordered" semiconductors to the above "ordered-disordered" scheme. The term is used in reference to the self-contained, crystallographically ordered semiconductor material systems which due to the extremely confined geometry (at least in one dimension less than about 5 nm - I agree, this number is rather arbitrary, but you are getting the idea...) feature different physical properties than their bulk counterparts. Obviously, we are talking here nanowires, nanotubes, quantum dots, graphene, etc.
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2010 J. Ruzyllo. All rights reserved.