Abstract
The phenomenon of wave propagation plays an essential role in electronics and in condensed matter physics. In electronics, a very important use of electromagnetic waves in several frequency ranges is to carry audio, video, and data signals through cables, optical fibers, and in free space. These applications are the subject of books on electromagnetics. Here we concentrate on waves that propagate inside the materials and are at the root of several electronic phenomena. In this chapter we initially briefly review the properties of electromagnetic waves and then treat the vibrations of atoms in the crystal lattice in the form of elastic waves. Then we describe the photoelectric effect that one century ago revealed the quantization of light waves and launched the idea of the wave-particle duality of electrons. This discovery opened the path to the development of quantum mechanics that is key for the understanding of the functioning of electronic devices.
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Further Reading
J.J. Brehm, W.J. Mullins, Introduction to the Structure of Matter—A Course in Modern Physics (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1989)
D. Halliday, R. Resnick, J. Walker, Fundamentals of Physics (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2015)
C. Kittel, Introduction to Solid State Physics (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2004)
S.M. Riad, I.M. Salama, Electromagnetic Fields and Waves: Fundamentals of Engineering (McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 2019)
F.G. Smith, T.A. King, D. Wilkins, Optics and Photonics: An Introduction (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2007)
S. T. Thornton, A. Rex, Modern Physics for Scientists and Engineers (Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, Boston, 2013)
P.A. Tipler, R.A. Llewellyn, Modern Physics (W. H. Freeman & Co., New York, 2012)
S.M. Wentworth, Fundamentals of Electromagnetics with Engineering Applications (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2013)
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Rezende, S.M. (2022). Waves and Particles in Matter. In: Introduction to Electronic Materials and Devices. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81772-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81772-5_2
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