Discovering Electron Concentration for Fermi Energy in Metals"

[jg370]

To determine the Fermi Energy for metals such as sodium, copper, gold, ect., one needs the Electron Concentration per cubic meter for the metal of interest.

I am curious how this quantity can be determined. I referred to my physics textbooks and did search the Internet. However, the information found is mostly related to semiconductor material and other exotic topics

Can anyone provide information on how such electron concentration can be determined or refer me to some literaure that would help.

Thank you for your kind attention

 

[genneth]

Look up the density. Look up the mass of one atom. Look up the number of valence electrons. Put these three numbers together in a way that gives you a number of the right units ;-)

 

[lbrits]

A neutral gold atom has 79 electrons and mass of 3.27x10^-25 kg. As a metal, gold has a density of 19300 kg/m^3. So there are 5.90x10^28 atoms and 4.66x10^30 electrons in a cubic meter of gold. This is the "first year" answer. Hope that helps.