? posted by Wild Card

? posted by Orpheus ? posted by Forceflow TomsHardware.com overclocked a processor to 5 Ghz, by cooling with liquid nitrogen: ? posted by Wild Card Yea I saw that, it was really cool. ? posted by scary_jeff pun intended? *incert cheezy drum sound to worse pun ever here* damnit now I get it Wow Im slow.

I don't

I doubt even liquid helium would be cold enough to stop conduction in most semi conductors, and it's certainly not cold enough for bose-einstein condensates. think mili kelvins there.

Semi conductors depend on a small energy gap between the valence and conduction bands typicalybetween 2 and 0.5 eV. Think of these as two seperate energy levels which electrons can occupy. Applying a small voltage to the material overcomes this gap and promotes electrons to the conduction band allowing electricity to flow. If the thermal energy was high enough to to promote the electrons without an applied voltage, then the material would be a conductor, not a semi conductor. You can calculate the thermal energy by the furmula E=kT where k is boltzmans constant and T is the temperature in kelvins. Hence you can find for yourself that at room temperature tha magnitude of thermal energy is only 0.026 eV, Hence thermal energy is NOT required for semiconduction.

Resistivity decreases with decreasing temperature due to the decreasing entropy of the system. Basicly this means, that if the atoms in the crystal are vibrateing less electrons are less likely to collide with them.

Conduction drops to zero at zero kelvin, yes. This is because all of the electrons are locked into the valence band. however I expect that by applying a voltage you are putting energy into the system and will heat it up just enough for cunduction. I'm not really sure what the actual behavior would be at 0 K, but that is a moot point as it is theoreticaly impossible to obtain absolute zero.

/Edit/ Okay, I just read fraggard's link. I think that is all pretty reliable information, but it doesn't adress my question of how the applied potential comes into play. I stand by what I said.

Im in grade 12...

The day I know more than you guys is well, the day cows fly.

Pacific University. Out in Forest Grove.

I really know nothing of CS.

When I transfered from PCC I was undecided as to whether I wanted to major in Chemistry or CS. Well, they assigned my a chemistry professor as my advisor, so... I'm a chem major and have never had a single CS class. I think it was a good "decision" though. honestly I'm quite unimpressed by most of the other departments at this school.