Fermi Level
According to the Pauli principle, the electrons in the ground state occupy all the lowest-energy states, up to some Fermi energy . Since the energy is given by
- ,
this corresponds to occupying all the states with wave vectors, where is so-called Fermi wave vector, given by
- ,
where is the total number of electrons in the system, and V is the total volume. The Fermi energy is then
In a nearly-free-electron model of a -valent metal, one can replace with, where is the total number of metal ions.
Read more about this topic: Free Electron Model
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)