Electron hole

This meaning is used in Auger electron spectroscopy (and other x-ray techniques), in computational chemistry, and to explain the low electron-electron scattering-rate in crystals (metals and semiconductors).

Although they act like elementary particles, holes are rather quasiparticles; they are different from the positron, which is the antiparticle of the electron.

In some ways, the behavior of a hole within a semiconductor crystal lattice is comparable to that of the bubble in a full bottle of water.

[3] The hole concept was pioneered in 1929 by Rudolf Peierls, who analyzed the Hall effect using Bloch's theorem, and demonstrated that a nearly full and a nearly empty Brillouin zones give the opposite Hall voltages.

[4] Hole conduction in a valence band can be explained by the following analogy: Imagine a row of people seated in an auditorium, where there are no spare chairs.

The empty seat moves one spot closer to the edge and the person waiting to sit down.

In reality, due to the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, combined with the energy levels available in the crystal, the hole is not localizable to a single position as described in the previous example.

Rather, the positive charge which represents the hole spans an area in the crystal lattice covering many hundreds of unit cells.

The dispersion relation near the top of the valence band is E = ℏ2k2/(2m*) with negative effective mass.

One way to think about this fact is that the electron states near the top of the band have negative effective mass, and those near the bottom of the band have positive effective mass, so the net motion is exactly zero.

Since force = mass × acceleration, a negative-effective-mass electron near the top of the valence band would move the opposite direction as a positive-effective-mass electron near the bottom of the conduction band, in response to a given electric or magnetic force.

That explains why holes can be treated in all situations as ordinary positively charged quasiparticles.

This results in lower mobility for holes under the influence of an electric field and this may slow down the speed of the electronic device made of that semiconductor.

This is one major reason for adopting electrons as the primary charge carriers, whenever possible in semiconductor devices, rather than holes.

OLED screens have been modified to reduce imbalance resulting in non radiative recombination by adding extra layers and/or decreasing electron density on one plastic layer so electrons and holes precisely balance within the emission zone.

When an electron leaves a helium atom, it leaves an electron hole in its place. This causes the helium atom to become positively charged.
A children's puzzle which illustrates the mobility of holes in an atomic lattice. The tiles are analogous to electrons, while the missing tile (lower right corner) is analogous to a hole. Just as the position of the missing tile can be moved to different locations by moving the tiles, a hole in a crystal lattice can move to different positions in the lattice by the motion of the surrounding electrons.
A semiconductor electronic band structure (right) includes the dispersion relation of each band, i.e. the energy of an electron E as a function of the electron's wavevector k . The "unfilled band" is the semiconductor's conduction band ; it curves upward indicating positive effective mass . The "filled band" is the semiconductor's valence band ; it curves downward indicating negative effective mass.
An array of Silicon atoms doped with Boron creates holes. This type of extrinsic semiconducting material is dubbed Type P .