The difference between drift current and diffusion current?

Drift Current b/w Diffusion Current:

 

_____________________________The difference between drift current and diffusion current is that drift current depends on the electric field applied: if there's no electric field, there's no drift current. Diffusion current occurs even though there isn't an electric field applied to the semiconductor. It does not have E as one of its parameters. The constants it does depend on are D_p and D_n, and +q and -q, for holes and electrons respectively. The first constants are called the diffusion coefficients, a proportionality factor. We don't worry too much about these because they are constants. We do worry about the gradient of the concentration of p and/or n, though. But, since we are talking about a one dimensional situation when we are solving for current densities, we only worry about the gradient (or derivative) with respect to the x-plane.

 

 ____________________________The other difference between drift current and diffusion current, is that the direction of the diffusion current depends on the change in the carrier concentrations, not the concentrations themselves. In the equation, the signs are reversed as we are used to seeing them. We usually assign a +q to holes and -q to electrons. In the case of diffusion current, they are reversed to be opposite of the derivative of the concentrations. This occurs because the carriers are diffusing from areas of high concentrations to areas of low concentrations.

 

For example, if the derivative of p with respect to x is positive, then the concentration of holes is growing as you move towards the +x direction. Diffusion current will be the opposite of that, the holes will be diffusing in the -x direction to where there's a lower concentration of holes. If the derivative is negative, the opposite will occur. The concentration of holes is decreasing as you go from the -x to +x direction. Therefore, holes will diffuse to the +x direction where there's a lower concentration of holes. This is why the negative sign is needed in the equation for the hole diffusion current.

The same goes for electrons, but in this case, the signs cancel for a positive derivative because the electrons, carrying -q, diffuse to the -x direction where there's less electrons. The sign remains if the derivative is negative, because electrons will be diffusing to the +x direction carrying a -q charge. For these reasons it's not included in the equation for the electron diffusion current.

source: http://www.ece.utep.edu/courses/ee3329/ee3329/Studyguide/ToC/Fundamentals/CAction/diffusion.html

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