Explanation

The charge carriers in metals are electrons, and most of the charge carriers in N-type semiconductors are also electrons, so they are all electrically conductive. However, the temperature relationship of metal conductivity is completely different from that of N-type semiconductors. The conductivity of materials depends on the concentration of internal carriers and the scattering they receive in motion. In metals and semiconductors, the scattering centers are roughly impurities, defects and phonon. Temperature has little effect on impurity and defect scattering, and phonon scattering has roughly the same effect on the two solids, both of which increase with temperature. The difference is the relationship between carrier concentration and temperature. The concentration of conductive electrons in metals and alloy basically does not change with temperature, while the concentration of electrons and holes in semiconductors increases rapidly with temperature. So the conductivity of metals decreases with increasing temperature, while that of semiconductors is the opposite.

Classification