In solid-state physics, the electron mobility characterizes how quickly an electron can move through a metal or semiconductor, when pulled by an electric field. In semiconductors, there is an analogous quantity for holes, called hole mobility. The term carrier mobility refers in general to both electron and hole mobility in semiconductors.
Electron and hole mobility are special cases of electrical mobility of charged particles in a fluid under an applied electric field.
When an electric field E is applied across a piece of material, the electrons respond by moving with an average velocity called the drift velocity, . Then the electron mobility μ is defined as
- .
Electron mobility is almost always specified in units of cm2/(V·s). This is different from the SI unit of mobility, m2/(V·s). They are related by 1m2/(V·s) = 104cm2/(V·s).
Conductivity is proportional to the product of mobility and carrier concentration. For example, the same conductivity could come from a small number of electrons with high mobility for each, or a large number of electrons with a small mobility for each. For metals, it would not typically matter which of these is the case, since most metal electrical behavior depends on conductivity alone. Therefore mobility is relatively unimportant in metal physics. On the other hand, for semiconductors, the behavior of transistors and other devices can be very different depending on whether there are many electrons with low mobility or few electrons with high mobility. Therefore mobility is a very important parameter for semiconductor materials. Almost always, higher mobility leads to better device performance, with other things equal.
Semiconductor mobility depends on the impurity concentrations (including donor and acceptor concentrations), defect concentration, temperature, and electron and hole concentrations. It also depends on the electric field, particularly at high fields when velocity saturation occurs. It can be determined by the Hall effect, or inferred from transistor behavior.
Read more about Electron Mobility: Examples, Electric Field Dependence and Velocity Saturation, Relation Between Scattering and Mobility, Doping Concentration Dependence in Heavily-doped Silicon
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