How does quartz conduct electricity?

Question

I understand that quartz is used in the manufacture of semiconductors. How is this mineral able to conduct electricity? I think it is both covalently and ionically bonded. I am new to this stuff and cannot see if it is solid how electricity is able to be conducted.

Answer 1

it doesn't, it's the base template in whitch all the P-N juntions are channeled through. The quartz is a disc on which the semiconductors are made (wafers) ...they are 6inch diameter, 8inch or 12 inch, with several chips to thousands on each one.

Answer 2

I am not entirely sure that quartz in particular is a conductor, if I remember correctly, quartz is a pretty good isolator. Crystalline quartz has some certain interesting properties - anisotropic crystals of quartz display changes of linear dimensions in accordance with the changes
of electrical field applied to certain faces of the crystal, but it
does not mean that they are conductive. The piezo element is more of a capacitor-type of a circuit, and the potential necessary to produce significant changes in quartz is pretty large - thousands of volts if i remember. Modern piezoceramics have better characteristics but they
are a different story.

Answer 3

Quartz is an insulator, but it has an interesting property called the piezoelectric effect. Whenever quartz is strained, it produces charge. Conversely, when charge is applied to 2 opposing sides of a quartz crystal, mechanical strain will result in the crystal lattice.

This mechanical to electrical transform is useful in several electronic applications, such as frequency standards (due to mechanical resonance) and sound transducers -- particularly ultrasonic transducers.

Quarts has also been tried as a substrate for other semiconductor crystals, somewhat unsucessfully -- but it is used as a starter to grow silicon crystals.


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