Today we begin our discussion of Chapter 11. Important areas are semiconductors, ceramics, and magnetic materials. Also, some of the basic ideas in chapters 6 through 9 are very useful. Solids consist of atoms. The easiest path of study is to first look at the properties of perfectly ordered materials and then to see how defects, impurities, and other forms of disorder change these properties.
Solids are stable because the atoms bind together.
There are different types of forces between atoms, and this leads to differences in the properties of solids. Type I. Ionic materials, prototype NaCl. The electrons like to sit in closed shells, and this can be accomplished by transferring an electron from Na to Cl and to form the ions and . This costs energy, though, if we assume that the ions are infenitely far apart. If we bring them closer together, we gain energy due to the Coulomb attraction.