Bandgap
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The energy difference between two allowed ranges of electron energy in a solid; especially the difference between the energies of the valence band and the conduction band.
"The problem has been the lack of what is known as a bandgap. Semiconductors have bands of higher and lower energies and a point – the bandgap – at which excited electrons can hop from one to the other. This effectively allows switching on and off of the flow of current, so it is either conducting or not conducting, creating the binary system of zeroes and ones used in digital computers. […] Now, Walter de Heer at Georgia Tech in Atlanta and his colleagues have created graphene with a bandgap and even demonstrated a working transistor, an on/off switch that either prevents or allows current to flow through it."
- 2 A gap in a frequency range in which waves cannot propagate.
"The propagation of an acoustic wave inside a phononic crystal is forbidden in the bandgap frequency range due to Bragg scattering."
Example
More examples"The problem has been the lack of what is known as a bandgap. Semiconductors have bands of higher and lower energies and a point – the bandgap – at which excited electrons can hop from one to the other. This effectively allows switching on and off of the flow of current, so it is either conducting or not conducting, creating the binary system of zeroes and ones used in digital computers. […] Now, Walter de Heer at Georgia Tech in Atlanta and his colleagues have created graphene with a bandgap and even demonstrated a working transistor, an on/off switch that either prevents or allows current to flow through it."
Etymology
From band + gap.
Related phrases
More for "bandgap"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.