The materials such as copper, aluminium etc. are good conductors of
electricity. While the materials such as wood, glass, mica etc. are very
bad conductors of electricity and are called insulators. There is
another class of materials, whose conductivity i.e. ability to carry
electricity, lies between that of conductors and insulators. Such
materials are called semiconductors. Germanium (Ge) and Silicon (Si) are
two well known semiconductor materials.
Alongwith these two basics semiconductor materials, some impurities are
used to obtain extrinsic semiconductor materials called n-type and
p-type. These two materials are then chemically combined to obtain p-n
junction. Such a semiconductor p-n junction forms a popular electronic
device called diode.
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