charge carrier
Sign in to saveparticle free to move, carrying an electric charge, especially the particles that carry electric charges in electrical conductors
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- charged particle
Show 4 more facts
- topic's main category
- Category:Charge carriers
- has characteristic
- electric charge
- facet of
- electrical conduction
- studied by
- electrochemistry
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
In solid state physics, a charge carrier is a particle or quasiparticle that is free to move, carrying an electric charge, especially the particles that carry electric charges in electrical conductors. Examples are electrons, ions and holes. In a conducting medium, an electric field can exert force on these free particles, causing a net motion of the particles through the medium; this is what constitutes an electric current. The electron and the proton are the elementary charge carriers, each carrying one elementary charge (e), of the same magnitude and opposite sign.
In conductors
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “charge carrier” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.