Band diagram

In solid-state physics of semiconductors, a band diagram is a diagram plotting various key electron energy levels (Fermi level and nearby energy band edges) as a function of some spatial dimension, which is often denoted x. These diagrams help to explain the operation of many kinds of semiconductor devices and to visualize band bending.

A band diagram should not be confused with a band structure plot. In both a band diagram and a band structure plot, the vertical axis corresponds to the energy of an electron. The difference is that in a band structure plot the horizontal axis represents the wavevector of an electron in an infinitely large, homogeneous material (a crystal or vacuum), whereas in a band diagram the horizontal axis represents position in space, usually passing through multiple materials. The bands may be coloured to distinguish level filling.

A band diagram does however try to show the changes in the band structure from place to place. In doing so, there is an intrinsic conflict due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: the band structure relies on momentum which is only precisely defined for large length scales. For this reason, the band diagram can only accurately depict evolution of band structures over long length scales, and has difficulty in showing the microscopic picture of sharp, atomic scale interfaces between different materials (or between a material and vacuum). Typically, an interface must be depicted as a "black box", though its long-distance effects can be shown in the band diagram as asymptotic band bending.

The vertical axis of the band diagram represents the energy of an electron, which includes both kinetic and potential energy. The horizontal axis represents position, often not being drawn to scale. Note that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle prevents the band diagram from being drawn with a high positional resolution, since the band diagram shows energy bands (as resulting from a momentum-dependent band structure).

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