Material class
Semiconductors & Functional Materials
Covalent (Si, GaAs) or ionic-covalent; band gap defines electronic behavior.
What you get
- Tunable electronic/optical properties via doping and heterostructures
- Foundation of electronics, photonics, sensors, PV
- Functional effects: piezo-, ferro-, thermo-electricity, magnetism
What you pay for it
- Brittle; extreme purity/processing requirements
- Expensive single-crystal growth
- Sensitive to defects and contamination
Typical applications
ICs, power electronics, LEDs, lasers, solar cells, MEMS, sensors, actuators.
Processing routes
Czochralski growth, epitaxy (MBE, MOCVD), lithography, doping/implantation, thin-film deposition.
Semiconductors & Functional Materials in the materials library
4 entries in the library belong to this class, each with its own property table:
- Monocrystalline silicon — Elemental semiconductor
- Gallium nitride (GaN) — Wide-bandgap semiconductor
- PZT (lead zirconate titanate) — Piezoelectric ceramic
- NdFeB (N42–N52) — Hard magnetic material
Representative materials
Si, SiC, GaN, GaAsInP, CdTe, perovskite PVPZT, BaTiO₃Bi₂Te₃ (thermoelectric)
Other classes
Materials library →
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Choosing within semiconductors & functional materials
The selector ranks candidates inside a class — and tells you when the right answer is in a different class entirely.