Gallium arsenide, a material used to manufacture laser printers and compact disc players, has a band gap of 130 kJ/mol. Is GaAs a metallic conductor, a semiconductor, or an electrical insulator? With what group 4A element is GaAs isoelectronic? (Isoelectronic substances have the same number of electrons.)

Video transcript

Hello everyone. And this problem we're being asked is indium antimony is expected to be an insulator conductor or semiconductor. And with what group for a element do you expect that this small kill to be Isil electronic with. So the band theories explains how solid materials conduct electricity to explaining in simple words. So band theory, it can be said that electrons remain in the valence band and the conduction band does not have electrons. Again, this is just a simplified version of the band theory. So during the conduction process, the electrons move from the valence band to the conduction band. So for our conductors, the energy gap between so B T R valence band. So vB and our conduction band is small for our insulators. The energy gap between our valence band and our conduction band is large. And lastly for our semiconductors. The band gap here is somewhere between a conductor and is later. All right, let's roll it down a little bit. So, the problem we're being told that the band gap Is 16.4. It's actually about this a little bit more clearly 16. kg joules per mole. And in this molecule it's not too large that it can be called an insulator and it's not too small that it can be called a conductor. So if it's in the middle then the indian gentleman ID is a semi conductor. So that's our first answer for this problem. Then continuing on, we know that indium is a group three element again. Let's go ahead and take notes for this. So Indian is a Group three elements. And antimony Is a group five elements. So the element with which are indian and harmonize should be ice electronics with is a group for a element and that should be in between the two elements. So taking a look at the p r d p R table, then we find out that the element is going to be 10, so that's going to be my second and final answer for this question. Thank you all so much for watching.