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The property that distinguishes an insulator is its resistivity; insulators have higher resistivity than semiconductors or conductors. The most common examples are non-metals. A perfect insulator does not exist because even insulators contain small numbers of mobile charges (charge carriers) which can carry current.
The resistance of a given conductor depends on the material it is made of, and on its dimensions. For a given material, the resistance is inversely proportional to the cross-sectional area. [1] For example, a thick copper wire has lower resistance than an otherwise-identical thin copper wire. Also, for a given material, the resistance is ...
The electrical resistivity of a metallic conductor decreases gradually as temperature is lowered. In normal (that is, non-superconducting) conductors, such as copper or silver, this decrease is limited by impurities and other defects. Even near absolute zero, a real sample of a normal conductor shows some resistance. In a superconductor, the ...
where is the length of the conductor, measured in metres (m), A is the cross-sectional area of the conductor measured in square metres (m 2), σ is the electrical conductivity measured in siemens per meter (S·m −1), and ρ is the electrical resistivity (also called specific electrical resistance) of the material, measured in ohm-metres (Ω ...
In electromagnetism, a dielectric (or dielectric medium) is an electrical insulator that can be polarised by an applied electric field.When a dielectric material is placed in an electric field, electric charges do not flow through the material as they do in an electrical conductor, because they have no loosely bound, or free, electrons that may drift through the material, but instead they ...
A compound semiconductor is a semiconductor compound composed of chemical elements of at least two different species. These semiconductors form for example in periodic table groups 13–15 (old groups III–V), for example of elements from the Boron group (old group III, boron, aluminium, gallium, indium) and from group 15 (old group V, nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony, bismuth).
Electrical connectors essentially consist of two classes of materials: conductors and insulators. Properties important to conductor materials are contact resistance, conductivity, mechanical strength, formability, and resilience. [8] Insulators must have a high electrical resistance, withstand high temperatures, and be easy to manufacture for a ...
This kind of insulator can become a conductor by changing some parameters, which may be composition, pressure, strain, voltage, or magnetic field. The effect is known as a Mott transition and can be used to build smaller field-effect transistors , switches and memory devices than possible with conventional materials.