group 3/4/5 atoms (1 Viewer)

[sasquatch]

In the jacaranda book it says group 4 atoms are atoms which contain four electrons in their valency band, and consequently, group 3 and 5 atoms are atoms which contain 3 and 5 electrons in their valency band respectively.

Upon looking at this site on wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivalent, it shows that group 3,4,5 atoms arent necessarily those which have 3,4 or 5 valency electrons. It shows below the atoms which fall under the different valency categories. Would it be better to refer to these groups then as divalent, trivalent and pentavalent atoms instead of group 3, 4 or 5 atoms?

 

[alcalder]

Here is an interesting periodic table:

http://xray.bmc.uu.se/Courses/Tables/periodic_table.html

It shows that the names Group III, IV and V are OLD names and that thre is a new IUPAC standard of naming the groups and Groups 3,4 and 5 are not the same.

This is an article from Wikipedia about doping and they are very careful to use Roman numerals when labelling the group numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_(semiconductors)

Because, the question we should then ask - if you are doping with trivalent and pentavalent atoms, can you use any trivalent or pentavalent atom OR can you only use those in GROUP's III and V respectively? I think you will the answer is no. But I coulkd be wrong. It may be best to describe them as Group III trivalent atoms and Group V pentavalent atoms - just to be ultra sure, if you wish.

Someone may wish to correct me.

 

[sasquatch]

Hey thanks for that. I'll just use the roman numeral method of writing the groups then.