Electrical conductivity in the context of Specific property

Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orange color. Copper is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, as a building material, and as a constituent of various metal alloys, such as sterling silver used in jewelry, cupronickel used to make marine hardware and coins, and constantan used in strain gauges and thermocouples for temperature measurement.

Copper is one of the few native metals, meaning metals that occur naturally in a directly usable, unalloyed metallic form. This led to very early human use in several regions, from c. 8000 BC. Thousands of years later, it was the first metal to be smelted from sulfide ores, c. 5000 BC; the first metal to be cast into a shape in a mold, c. 4000 BC; and the first metal to be purposely alloyed with another metal, tin, to create bronze, c. 3500 BC.

Silver is a chemical element; it has symbol Ag (from Latin argentum 'silver') and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. Silver is found in the Earth's crust in the pure, free elemental form ("native silver"), as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc refining.

Silver has long been valued as a precious metal, commonly sold and marketed beside gold and platinum. Silver metal is used in many bullion coins, sometimes alongside gold: while it is more abundant than gold, it is much less abundant as a native metal. Its purity is typically measured on a per-mille basis; a 94%-pure alloy is described as "0.940 fine". As one of the seven metals of antiquity, silver has had an enduring role in most human cultures. In terms of scarcity, silver is the most abundant of the big three precious metals—platinum, gold, and silver—among these, platinum is the rarest with around 139 troy ounces of silver mined for every one ounce of platinum.

A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities ("doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping levels are present in the same crystal, they form a semiconductor junction. However the term "semiconductors" is sometimes used to refer to semiconductor devices such as microchips and computer processors, which work using the physical properties of semiconductors.

The behavior of charge carriers, which include electrons, ions, and electron holes, at these junctions is the basis of diodes, transistors, and most modern electronics. Some examples of semiconductors are silicon, germanium, gallium arsenide, and elements near the so-called "metalloid staircase" on the periodic table. After silicon, gallium arsenide is the second-most common semiconductor and is used in laser diodes, solar cells, microwave-frequency integrated circuits, and others. Silicon is a critical element for fabricating most electronic circuits.

In chemistry, a transition metal (or transition element) is a chemical element in the d-block of the periodic table (groups 3 to 12), though the elements of group 12 (and less often group 3) are sometimes excluded. The lanthanide and actinide elements (the f-block) are called inner transition metals and are sometimes considered to be transition metals as well.

They are lustrous metals with good electrical and thermal conductivity. Most (with the exception of group 11 and group 12) are hard and strong, and have high melting and boiling temperatures. They form compounds in any of two or more different oxidation states and bind to a variety of ligands to form coordination complexes that are often coloured. They form many useful alloys and are often employed as catalysts in elemental form or in compounds such as coordination complexes and oxides. Most are strongly paramagnetic because of their unpaired d electrons, as are many of their compounds. All of the elements that are ferromagnetic near room temperature are transition metals (iron, cobalt and nickel) or inner transition metals (gadolinium).

A tidal creek or tidal channel is a narrow inlet or estuary that is affected by the ebb and flow of ocean tides. Thus, it has variable salinity and electrical conductivity over the tidal cycle, and flushes salts from inland soils. Tidal creeks are characterized by slow water velocity, resulting in buildup of fine, organic sediment in wetlands. Creeks may often be a dry to muddy channel with little or no flow at low tide, but with significant depth of water at high tide. Due to the temporal variability of water quality parameters within the tidally influenced zone, there are unique biota associated with tidal creeks which are often specialised to such zones. Nutrients and organic matter are delivered downstream to habitats normally lacking these, while the creeks also provide access to inland habitat for salt-water organisms.

In solid-state physics and solid-state chemistry, a band gap, also called a bandgap or energy gap, is an energy range in a solid where no electronic states exist. In graphs of the electronic band structure of solids, the band gap refers to the energy difference (often expressed in electronvolts) between the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band in insulators and semiconductors. It is the energy required to promote an electron from the valence band to the conduction band. The resulting conduction-band electron (and the electron hole in the valence band) are free to move within the crystal lattice and serve as charge carriers to conduct electric current. It is closely related to the HOMO/LUMO gap in chemistry. If the valence band is completely full and the conduction band is completely empty, then electrons cannot move within the solid because there are no available states. If the electrons are not free to move within the crystal lattice, then there is no generated current due to no net charge carrier mobility. However, if some electrons transfer from the valence band (mostly full) to the conduction band (mostly empty), then current can flow (see carrier generation and recombination). Therefore, the band gap is a major factor determining the electrical conductivity of a solid. Substances having large band gaps (also called "wide" band gaps) are generally insulators, those with small band gaps (also called "narrow" band gaps) are semiconductors, and conductors either have very small band gaps or none, because the valence and conduction bands overlap to form a continuous band.

It is possible to produce laser induced insulator-metal transitions which have already been experimentally observed in some condensed matter systems, like thin films of C₆₀, doped manganites, or in vanadium sesquioxide V₂O₃. These are special cases of the more general metal-to-nonmetal transitions phenomena which were intensively studied in the last decades. A one-dimensional analytic model of laser induced distortion of band structure was presented for a spatially periodic (cosine) potential. This problem is periodic both in space and time and can be solved analytically using the Kramers-Henneberger co-moving frame. The solutions can be given with the help of the Mathieu functions.

A semiconductor device is an electronic component that relies on the electronic properties of a semiconductor material (primarily silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide, as well as organic semiconductors) for its function. Its conductivity lies between conductors and insulators. Semiconductor devices have replaced vacuum tubes in most applications. They conduct electric current in the solid state, rather than as free electrons across a vacuum (typically liberated by thermionic emission) or as free electrons and ions through an ionized gas.

Semiconductor devices are manufactured both as single discrete devices and as integrated circuits, which consist of two or more devices—which can number from the hundreds to the billions—manufactured and interconnected on a single semiconductor wafer (also called a substrate).

In material science, layered materials are solids with highly anisotropic bonding, in which two-dimensional sheets are internally strongly bonded, but only weakly bonded to adjacent layers. Owing to their distinctive structures, layered materials are often suitable for intercalation reactions.

One large family of layered materials are metal dichalcogenides. In such materials, the M-chalcogen bonding is strong and covalent. These materials exhibit anisotropic electronic properties such as thermal and electrical conductivity.

An electromagnetic coil is an electrical conductor such as a wire in the shape of a coil (spiral or helix). Electromagnetic coils are used in electrical engineering, in applications where electric currents interact with magnetic fields, in devices such as electric motors, generators, inductors, electromagnets, transformers, sensor coils such as in medical MRI imaging machines. Either an electric current is passed through the wire of the coil to generate a magnetic field, or conversely, an external time-varying magnetic field through the interior of the coil generates an EMF (voltage) in the conductor.

A current through any conductor creates a circular magnetic field around the conductor due to Ampere's law. The advantage of using the coil shape is that it increases the strength of the magnetic field produced by a given current. The magnetic fields generated by the separate turns of wire all pass through the center of the coil and add (superpose) to produce a strong field there. The greater the number of turns of wire, the stronger the field produced. Conversely, a changing external magnetic flux induces a voltage in a conductor such as a wire, due to Faraday's law of induction. The induced voltage can be increased by winding the wire into a coil because the field lines intersect the circuit multiple times.

Electroplating, also known as electrochemical deposition or electrodeposition, is a process for producing a metal coating on a solid substrate through the reduction of cations of that metal by means of a direct electric current. The part to be coated acts as the cathode (negative electrode) of an electrolytic cell; the electrolyte is a solution of a salt whose cation is the metal to be coated, and the anode (positive electrode) is usually either a block of that metal, or of some inert conductive material. The current is provided by an external power supply.

Electroplating is widely used in industry and decorative arts to improve the surface qualities of objects—such as resistance to abrasion and corrosion, lubricity, reflectivity, electrical conductivity, or appearance. It is used to build up thickness on undersized or worn-out parts and to manufacture metal plates with complex shape, a process called electroforming. It is used to deposit copper and other conductors in forming printed circuit boards and copper interconnects in integrated circuits. It is also used to purify metals such as copper.

A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with a diameter in the nanometre range (nanoscale). They are one of the allotropes of carbon. Two broad classes of carbon nanotubes are recognized:

• Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have diameters around 0.5–2.0 nanometres, about 100,000th the width of a human hair. They can be idealised as cutouts from a two-dimensional graphene sheet rolled up to form a hollow cylinder.
• Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) consist of nested single-wall carbon nanotubes in a nested, tube-in-tube structure. Double- and triple-walled carbon nanotubes are special cases of MWCNT.

Carbon nanotubes can exhibit remarkable properties, such as exceptional tensile strength and thermal conductivity because of their nanostructure and strength of the bonds between carbon atoms. Some SWCNT structures exhibit high electrical conductivity while others are semiconductors. In addition, carbon nanotubes can be chemically modified. These properties are expected to be valuable in many areas of technology, such as electronics, optics, composite materials (replacing or complementing carbon fibres), nanotechnology (including nanomedicine), and other applications of materials science.

An intrinsic semiconductor, also called a pure semiconductor, undoped semiconductor or i-type semiconductor, is a semiconductor without any significant dopant species present. The number of charge carriers is therefore determined by the properties of the material itself instead of the amount of impurities. In intrinsic semiconductors the number of excited electrons and the number of holes are equal: n = p. This may be the case even after doping the semiconductor, though only if it is doped with both donors and acceptors equally. In this case, n = p still holds, and the semiconductor remains intrinsic, though doped. This means that some conductors are both intrinsic as well as extrinsic but only if n (electron donor dopant/excited electrons) is equal to p (electron acceptor dopant/vacant holes that act as positive charges).

The electrical conductivity of chemically pure semiconductors can still be affected by crystallographic defects of technological origin (like vacancies), some of which can behave similar to dopants. Their effect can often be neglected, though, and the number of electrons in the conduction band is then exactly equal to the number of holes in the valence band. The conduction of current of intrinsic semiconductor is enabled purely by electron excitation across the band-gap, which is usually small at room temperature except for narrow-bandgap semiconductors, like Hg
_0.8Cd
_0.2Te.

In polymer chemistry, an inorganic polymer is a polymer with a skeletal structure that does not include carbon atoms in the backbone. Polymers containing inorganic and organic components are sometimes called hybrid polymers, and most so-called inorganic polymers are hybrid polymers. One of the best known examples is polydimethylsiloxane, otherwise known commonly as silicone rubber. Inorganic polymers offer some properties not found in organic materials including low-temperature flexibility, electrical conductivity, and nonflammability. The term inorganic polymer refers generally to one-dimensional polymers, rather than to heavily crosslinked materials such as silicate minerals. Inorganic polymers with tunable or responsive properties are sometimes called smart inorganic polymers. A special class of inorganic polymers are geopolymers, which may be anthropogenic or naturally occurring.

When an electromagnetic wave travels through a medium in which it gets attenuated (this is called an "opaque" or "attenuating" medium), it undergoes exponential decay as described by the Beer–Lambert law. However, there are many possible ways to characterize the wave and how quickly it is attenuated. This article describes the mathematical relationships among:

• attenuation coefficient;
• penetration depth and skin depth;
• complex angular wavenumber and propagation constant;
• complex refractive index;
• complex electric permittivity;
• AC conductivity (susceptance).

Note that in many of these cases there are multiple, conflicting definitions and conventions in common use. This article is not necessarily comprehensive or universal.

Exploration geophysics is an applied branch of geophysics and economic geology, which uses physical methods at the surface of the Earth, such as seismic, gravitational, magnetic, electrical and electromagnetic, to measure the physical properties of the subsurface, along with the anomalies in those properties. It is most often used to detect or infer the presence and position of economically useful geological deposits, such as ore minerals; fossil fuels and other hydrocarbons; geothermal reservoirs; and groundwater reservoirs. It can also be used to detect the presence of unexploded ordnance.

Exploration geophysics can be used to directly detect the target style of mineralization by measuring its physical properties directly. For example, one may measure the density contrasts between the dense iron ore and the lighter silicate host rock, or one may measure the electrical conductivity contrast between conductive sulfide minerals and the resistive silicate host rock.

In materials science, a grain boundary is the interface between two grains, or crystallites, in a polycrystalline material. Grain boundaries are two-dimensional defects in the crystal structure, and tend to decrease the electrical and thermal conductivity of the material. Most grain boundaries are preferred sites for the onset of corrosion and for the precipitation of new phases from the solid. They are also important to many of the mechanisms of creep. On the other hand, grain boundaries disrupt the motion of dislocations through a material, so reducing crystallite size is a common way to improve mechanical strength, as described by the Hall–Petch relationship.