Drude model


The Drude model of electrical conduction was proposed in 1900 by Paul Drude to explain the transport properties of electrons in materials. The model, which is an application of kinetic theory, assumes that the microscopic behaviour of electrons in a solid may be treated classically and looks much like a pinball machine, with a sea of constantly jittering electrons bouncing and re-bouncing off heavier, relatively immobile positive ions.
The two most significant results of the Drude model are an electronic equation of motion,
and a linear relationship between current density and electric field,
Here is the time, ⟨p⟩ is the average momentum per electron and, and are respectively the electron charge, number density, mass, and mean free time between ionic collisions. The latter expression is particularly important because it explains in semi-quantitative terms why Ohm's law, one of the most ubiquitous relationships in all of electromagnetism, should hold.
The model was extended in 1905 by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz to give the relation between the thermal conductivity and the electric conductivity of metals, and is a classical model. Later it was supplemented with the results of quantum theory in 1933 by Arnold Sommerfeld and Hans Bethe, leading to the Drude–Sommerfeld model.

History

German physicist Paul Drude proposed his model in 1900 when it was not clear whether atoms existed, and it was not clear what atoms were on a microscopic scale. The first direct proof of atoms through the computation of the Avogadro number from a microscopic model is due to Albert Einstein, the first modern model of atom structure dates to 1904 and the Rutherford model to 1909.
Drude starts from the discovery of electrons in 1897 by J.J. Thomson and assumes as a simplistic model of solids that the bulk of the solid is composed of positively charged scattering centers, and a sea of electrons submerge those scattering centers to make the total solid neutral from a charge perspective.
In modern terms this is reflected in the valence electron model where the sea of electrons is composed of the valence electrons only, and not the full set of electrons available in the solid, and the scattering centers are the inner shells of tightly bound electrons to the nucleus. The scattering centers had a positive charge equivalent to the valence number of the atoms.
This similarity added to some computation errors in the Drude paper, ended up providing a reasonable qualitative theory of solids capable of making good predictions in certain cases and giving completely wrong results in others.
Whenever people tried to give more substance and detail to the nature of the scattering centers, and the mechanics of scattering, and the meaning of the length of scattering, all these attempts ended in failures.
The scattering lengths computed in the Drude model, are of the order of 10 to 100 inter-atomic distances, and also these could not be given proper microscopic explanations. In modern terms, there are experiments in which electrons can travel for meters in a solid in the same manner as they would travel in free space, and this shows how a purely classical model cannot work.
Drude scattering is not electron-electron scattering which is only a secondary phenomenon in the modern theory, neither nuclear scattering given electrons can be at most be absorbed by nuclei. The model remains a bit mute on the microscopic mechanisms, in modern terms this is what is now called the "primary scattering mechanism" where the underlying phenomenon can be different case per case.
The model gives better predictions for metals, especially in regards to conductivity, and sometimes is called Drude theory of metals. This is because metals have essentially a better approximation to the free electron model, i.e. metals do not have complex band structures, electrons behave essentially as free particles and where, in the case of metals, the effective number of de-localized electrons is essentially the same as the valence number.
The same Drude theory, despite inconsistencies which baffled most physicists of the period, was the major one accepted to explain solids until the introduction in 1927 of the Drude-Sommerfeld model.
A few more hints of the correct ingredients of a modern theory of solids was given by the following:
Drude used Maxwell–Boltzmann statistics for the gas of electrons and for deriving the model, which was the only one available at that time. By replacing the statistics with the correct Fermi Dirac statistics, Sommerfeld significantly improved the predictions of the model, although still having a semi-classical theory that could not predict all results of the modern quantum theory of solids.
Nowadays Drude and Sommerfeld models are still significant to understanding the qualitative behaviour of solids and to get a first qualitative understanding of a specific experimental setup. This is a generic method in solid state physics, where it is typical to incrementally increase the complexity of the models to give more and more accurate predictions. It is less common to use a full-blown quantum field theory from first principles, given the complexities due to the huge numbers of particles and interactions and the little added value of the extra mathematics involved.

Assumptions

Removing or improving upon each of these assumptions gives more refined models, that can more accurately describe different solids:

DC field

The simplest analysis of the Drude model assumes that electric field is both uniform and constant, and that the thermal velocity of electrons is sufficiently high such that they accumulate only an infinitesimal amount of momentum between collisions, which occur on average every seconds.
Then an electron isolated at time will on average have been travelling for time since its last collision, and consequently will have accumulated momentum
During its last collision, this electron will have been just as likely to have bounced forward as backward, so all prior contributions to the electron's momentum may be ignored, resulting in the expression
Substituting the relations
results in the formulation of Ohm's law mentioned above:

Time-varying analysis

The dynamics may also be described by introducing an effective drag force. At time the electron's momentum will be:
where can be interpreted as generic force on the carrier or more specifically on the electron. is the momentum of the carrier with random direction after the collision and with absolute kinetic energy
On average, a fraction of of the electrons will not have experienced another collision, the other fraction that had the collision on average will come out in a random direction and will contribute to the total momentum to only a factor which is of second order.
With a bit of algebra and dropping terms of order, this results in the generic differential equation
The second term is actually an extra drag force or damping term due to the Drude effects.

Constant electric field

At time the average electron's momentum will be
and then
where denotes average momentum and the charge of the electrons. This, which is an inhomogeneous differential equation, may be solved to obtain the general solution of
for. The steady state solution,, is then
As above, average momentum may be related to average velocity and this in turn may be related to current density,
and the material can be shown to satisfy Ohm's law with a DC-conductivity :

AC field

The Drude model can also predict the current as a response to a time-dependent electric field with an angular frequency. The complex conductivity is
Here it is assumed that:
In engineering, is generally replaced by in all equations, which reflects the phase difference with respect to origin, rather than delay at the observation point traveling in time.

Proof using the equation of motion


Given
And the equation of motion above
substituting
Given
defining the complex conductivity from:
We have:


The imaginary part indicates that the current lags behind the electrical field. This happens because the electrons need roughly a time to accelerate in response to a change in the electrical field. Here the Drude model is applied to electrons; it can be applied both to electrons and holes; i.e., positive charge carriers in semiconductors. The curves for are shown in the graph.
If a sinusoidally varying electric field with frequency is applied to the solid, the negatively charged electrons behave as a plasma that tends to move a distance x apart from the positively charged background. As a result, the sample is polarized and there will be an excess charge at the opposite surfaces of the sample.
The dielectric constant of the sample is expressed as
where is the electric displacement and is the polarization density.
The polarization density is written as
and the polarization density with n electron density is
After a little algebra the relation between polarization density and electric field can be expressed as
The frequency dependent dielectric function of the solid is

Proof using maxwell equations


Given the approximations for the included above
  • we assumed no electromagnetic field: this is always smaller by a factor v/c given the additional Lorentz term in the equation of motion
  • we assumed spatially uniform field: this is true if the field does not oscillate considerably across a few mean free paths of electrons. This is typically not the case: the mean free path is of the order of Armstrongs corresponding to wavelengths typical of X rays.
Given the Maxwell equations without sources
then
or
which is an electromagnetic wave equation for a continuous homogeneous medium with dielectric constant in the helmoltz form
where the refractive index is and the phase velocity is
therefore the complex dielectric constant is
which in the case can be approximated to:


At a resonance frequency, called the plasma frequency, the dielectric function changes sign from negative to positive and real part of the dielectric function drops to zero.
The plasma frequency represents a plasma oscillation resonance or plasmon. The plasma frequency can be employed as a direct measure of the square root of the density of valence electrons in a solid. Observed values are in reasonable agreement with this theoretical prediction for a large number of materials. Below the plasma frequency, the dielectric function is negative and the field cannot penetrate the sample. Light with angular frequency below the plasma frequency will be totally reflected. Above the plasma frequency the light waves can penetrate the sample, a typical example are alkaline metals that becomes transparent in the range of ultraviolet radiation.

Thermal conductivity of metals

One of the most spectacular successes of the Drude model is due to the prediction of the Wiedemann-Franz law this was due to a set of circumstances and errors in the Drude paper.
Namely Drude predicted the value of the Lorentz number:
where the real values are mostly in the range between 2 and 3 for room temperatures between 0 and 100 degrees Celsius.

Proof together with the Drude errors


First of all solids can conduct heat given the movement of the charge carrier and given the movement of atoms or ions as per Drude model. Conductors have free charge carriers namely electrons where insulators essentially don't, ions are present in both. Given good conductivity of both electricity and heat from metals and not from semiconductors, the conductivity shall be given by the charge carriers.
We define thermal current density as the flux per unit time of thermal energy across a unit area perpendicular to the flow
where k is the thermal conductivity
Considering a one dimensional model the Energy of electrons depends on the temperature at the location of the collision
If we imagine a gradient of temperature where the temperature drops in the positive x direction, the average electron speed is null, but the electrons coming from the higher energy size will have had the last collision on average in and come with energies the ones coming from the lower energy size will come with energies.
The total flux is given by
and therefore in the limit of a mean free path that is small the quantity reduces to the derivative over x.
And therefore
Expanding to 3 degrees of freedom and given
or with the thermal conductivity
Here we will not take into account that the velocity v is also dependent on the temperature
and therefore on the position, this will not contribute significantly. We will also not define precisely what is the energy transported by a specific group of electrons.
diving by the conductivity and therefore getting rid of
Now drude introduced here two errors namely he used the classical statistical mechanics formula for which is an overestimate by a factor of 100 and the average energy still from classical mechanics which is an underestimate of a factor 100, namely the charge carriers move much faster than atoms and than what Drude could ever have imagined.
In total it remains:
This is half of the Drude result above, given that Drude also underestimated the conductivity by a factor of two due to underestimating by a factor of 2.
This was due to the fact that Drude estimated the time between last and next collision as the mean time between two collisions for a Poisson distribution.


Thermopower

A generic temperature gradient when switched on in a thin bar will trigger a current of electrons towards the lower temperature side, given the experiments are done in an open circuit manner this current will accumulate on that side generating an electric field countering the electric current. This field is called thermoelectric field:
and Q is called thermopower. The estimates by Drude are a factor of 100 low given the direct dependency with the specific heat.
where the typical thermopowers at room temperature are 100 times smaller of the order of micro-Volts.

Proof together with the Drude errors


From the simple one dimensional model
Expanding to 3 degrees of freedom
The mean velocity due to the Electric field
To have a total current null we have
And as usual in the Drude case
where the typical thermopowers at room temperature are 100 times smaller of the order of micro-Volts.

Drude response in real materials

The characteristic behavior of a Drude metal in the time or frequency domain, i.e. exponential relaxation with time constant or the frequency dependence for stated above, is called Drude response. In a conventional, simple, real metal such behavior is not found experimentally, because the characteristic frequency is in the infrared frequency range, where other features that are not considered in the Drude model play an important role. But for certain other materials with metallic properties, frequency-dependent conductivity was found that closely follows the simple Drude prediction for. These are materials where the relaxation rate is at much lower frequencies. This is the case for certain doped semiconductor single crystals, high-mobility two-dimensional electron gases, and heavy-fermion metals.

Accuracy of the model

Historically, the Drude formula was first derived in a limited way, namely by assuming that the charge carriers form a classical ideal gas. Arnold Sommerfeld considered quantum theory and extended the theory to the free electron model, where the carriers follow Fermi–Dirac distribution. The conductivity predicted is the same as in the Drude model because it does not depend on the form of the electronic speed distribution.
The Drude model provides a very good explanation of DC and AC conductivity in metals, the Hall effect, and the magnetoresistance in metals near room temperature. The model also explains partly the Wiedemann–Franz law of 1853. However, it greatly overestimates the electronic heat capacities of metals.
In reality, metals and insulators have roughly the same heat capacity at room temperature.
The model can also be applied to positive charge carriers.
In his original paper, Drude made an error, estimating the Lorenz number of Wiedemann–Franz law to be twice what it classically should have been, thus making it seem in agreement with the experimental value for the specific heat is about 100 times smaller than the classical prediction but this factor cancels out with the mean electronic speed that is about 100 times bigger than Drude's calculation.

Citations

General

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