The Fermi level is a hypothetical level of potential energy for an electron inside a crystalline solid. Occupying such a level would give an electron (in the fields of all its neighboring nuclei) a potential energy equal to its chemical potential (average diffusion energy per electron) as they both appear in the Fermi-Dirac distribution function,
which calculates the probability that an electron with energy occupies a particular single-particle state (density of states) within such a solid. T is the absolute temperature and k is Boltzmann's constant. When the exponential equals 1, and the value of describes the Fermi level as a state with 50% chance of being occupied by an electron for the given temperature of the solid.
Read more about Fermi Level: Other Terminology Problems, Some Other Complications, Summary
Famous quotes containing the word level:
“For him nor deep nor hill there is,
But all’s one level plain he hunts for flowers.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)