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Conductors and Semiconductors

Duration: 45 minutes

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the physics of electrical conduction. Although electricity has been known for several hundred years, it was only in the early twentieth century that physicists first satisfactorily explained the phenomenon. Electric current is the passage of charged particles through a medium - but a material will only conduct electricity if its atomic structure enables it to do so.

In investigating electrical conduction scientists discovered two new classes of material. Semiconductors, first exploited commercially in the 1950s, have given us the transistor, the solar cell and the silicon chip, and have revolutionised telecommunications. And superconductors, remarkable materials first observed in 1911, are used in medical imaging and at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

With:

Frank Close
Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford

Jenny Nelson
Professor of Physics at Imperial College London

Lesley Cohen
Professor of Solid State Physics at Imperial College London

Producer: Thomas Morris.

  • FURTHER READING

    Frank Close, ‘The Infinity Puzzle’ (Oxford University Press, 2011)

    Per Fridtjof Dahl, ‘Superconductivity: Its Historical Roots and Development from Mercury to the Ceramic Oxides’ (American Institute of Physics, 1992)

    J. C. Gallop, ‘SQUIDs, the Josephson Effects and Superconducting Electronics’ (The Adam Hilger Series on Measurement Science and Technology, 1990)

    A. C. Rose-Innes and E. H. Rhoderick, ‘Introduction to Superconductivity’ (International Series in Solid State Physics Volume 6, Pergamon Press, 1988)

    J. R. Waldram, ‘Superconductivity of Metals and Cuprates’ (Institute of Physics, 1996)

    Charles Kittel, ‘Introduction to Solid State Physics’ (8th edition, Wiley, 2004)

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