Does This Band Have Potential

Don’t you just love it when someone says, “You have potential.”What does that really mean? It means you have the ability to pursue and conquer anything you put your mind to.It means you have gifts and talents dormant waiting to be manifested. It means you have the ability which may be just under developed. Or is it simply having the courage to live out one’s personal dreams, perhaps an impossible one that one shall never attain but still a dream dreamed with courage. It is a dream that one attempts to bring to reality, no matter how likely to fail.So, living out your potential is in the striving, in the trying, or at least daring to. It lies in following your heart, in daring to fight your own personal battle, in striving to bring your own personal dream to life.Many people go to their grave with potential. If we are aware of the potential that is locked within each one of us crying out for exposure and ready to be fulfilled, how do we release it? Do you know what your potential in life is? What keeps us from reaching our potential? It could be lack of pursuing, knowledge or fear of failure. It could be holding on to internal excuses. It could be goals are small and don’t test our limits. We must be willing to identify it, claim it, plan it, start it, support it, practice it and have gratitude for it. In order to reach that potential, there is a transformation that we must go through.

When a semiconductor is in contact with another material such as a metal or an electrolyte solution. The equilibrium of Fermi levels of both the materials result in bending of semiconductor band edges at the junction. Band bending is a commonly observed phenomenon and is described extensively in most of the standard semiconductor text books. The band bending involves the movement of charge carriers from one side of the junction to other and vice versa. The study of such semiconductor/metal or semiconductor/electrolyte junctions is important in view of the applications such as rectification, photodetection and solar energy conversion etc., These junctions are usually Schottky in nature.The flat band potential [math]V_f[/math] is the potential required to bring back the semiconductor band edges to their flat band position from the bending position at the semiconductor/metal or semiconductor/electrolyte junction. Consequently, the Fermi levels of both the materials differ by an energy equal to [math]\sim qV_f.[/math], where [math]q[/math] is the charge of the carrier involved.The flat band potential is generally obtained from capacitance versus voltage (CV) measurements. The observed capacitance values are subsequently incorporated into the following Mott-Schottky equation to evaluate the flat band potential.[math]\dfrac{1}{C^2} = \dfrac{2}{\epsilon \epsilon_{o} A^{2} q N_{d}} \left ( V - V_{f} - \dfrac{k_{B}T}{q} \right )[/math]Where, [math]C[/math] is the semiconductor/metal or semiconductor/electrolyte junction capacitance, [math]\epsilon[/math] is the dielectric constant of semiconductor, [math]V[/math] is applied potential, [math]V_{f}[/math] is flat band potential, [math]N_{d}[/math] is doping density, [math]A[/math] is area of the depletion region/space charge region, [math]k_{B}[/math] is Boltzmann’s constant, [math]T[/math] is absolute temperature at which the measurement is done. The above equation plot yields a straight line from which the flat band potential [math]V_f[/math] of a given semiconductor can be extracted. However, the above Mott-Schottky equation is valid only under certain assumptions and are discussed at the following reference: On the determination of the flat-band potential of a semiconductor in contact with a metal or an electrolyte from the Mott-Schottky plot. For example, the surface states present at the junction results in improper values of the flat band potential that is extracted from the Mott-Schottky equation.

Negative electrode potential means the metal electrode is donating electron(s) to another electrode. In other words it is under oxidation process and is reducing the other electrode.For example… zinc has negative electrode potential value (-0.76 V). So zinc is a reducing electrode. It works as anode (negative) in electrochemical cell. While other electrode which is accepting electron(s) will act as cathode in electrochemical cell.