Question

Do holes (the majority carriers in P-type semiconductor) have mass?

Answer 1

no holes have no mass

Answer 2

can you prove that?

Answer 3

A hole is a concept representing 'lack of an electron'. so when we say, holes as carriers, its basically electron carriers in the opposite direction. so these conceptual holes shlould have the same mass as the electrons.

Answer 4

well as I believe, quantum particles have both particle as well as wave nature right? Electrons can behave as a wave(made of energy) as well as a particle(made of matter or that contains mass), so if we assume a quantum particle to SPECIFICALLY have the characteristics of a particle in the presence of an externally applied electric field,

Answer 5

then we may conclude that these particles to obey basic law of matter, space and mass

Answer 6

that implies that the absence of a particle to have no mass... but how is that?

Answer 7

sorry, you misunderstood what i said. A hole is just a way to represent the flow of charge. you can totally forget about the hole. its just a representation of the electron moving in the opposite direction. its not like its a new particle.
look if we say an electron moves in +x direction, then we can also absolutely say, a hole(i.e. same as an electron but with positive charge) is moving in the -x direction.

Answer 8

so the imaginarily oppositely moving electron may have an imaginary mass?

Answer 9

A hole is just the deficiency of electron so it have no mass.

Answer 10

guys please give this a serious thought, one has just invented this name 'hole' to represent ' a charge flow opposite to that by electrons'. thats it. thats the only thing a hole represents.

Now when you talk about mass of a hole, you cannot think of it without defining a context.
if you are saying, 'I want to find out the mass of the carriers responsible for the charge flow by measuring the observable quantities like current etc', ofcourse, the mass would be observed to be the same as that of an electron.

But if you say something like - 'I want to weigh this hole and calculate its mass', this is totally out of the question, because a hole is just an idea.

Answer 11

when a silicon is doped with 3rd group elements it makes p type material.
the number of electron in the lattice of this material is 7 hence there is a vacancy in the lattice, since there is no electron present so this hole has no mass

Answer 12

yes, exactly why we think of it as electrons moving in opposite direction.
The concept of hole was thought of to easily think in terms of charge movement. its NOT a real particle guys, so it DOES NOT have any mass. that DOES NOT mean it has 0 mass. mass is UNDEFINED

Answer 13

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