What is hole current?

Answer 1

There are two type of carriers in any semiconductor. For a given sample, these carriers have a specific concentration and mobility. The current flow due to the holes carriers in any semiconductor is the hole current.

Answer'Holes' are imaginary positive, mobile, charge carriers used as a model to represent the behaviour of electric current in p-type semiconducting material. A 'model' is simply a means of explaining complex behavior in terms of something we can easily understand or picture in our minds. In reality, therefore, holes do not exist, but offer a convenient way of explaining current flow in semiconductors in an understandable way.

A 'hole' is simply a vacant position, formally occupied by an electron, rather than a real entity. As electrons move in one direction, relative to those electrons, these imaginary holes behave as though they move in the opposite direction (in rather the same way that scenery seems to be moving backwards when you look from a train whereas, in reality, it's the train that's moving forward!). So, as electrons move from negative to positive, holes appear as though the electrons are actually stationary and it's the holes that are moving from positive to negative.

So it's convenient to think of current flow through 'p-type' material, in particular. in terms of imaginary holes moving in the opposite direction to electron flow.

(You see a similar effect with led message boards. The message is formed by bright led dots that appear to move in one direction; but you can also argue that the message is formed by the unilluminated leds that appear to move in the opposite direction! You can think of the illuminated leds as electron flow and the unilluminated leds as hole flow.)

Diouly-dcp's answer

first lets look at what is hole

hole: is when an external voltage source of energy acquire to a piece of silicon or other,it allows the valence electrons to thermally jump from the valence bond to the conduction bond, when they moved, a vacancy is left. this vacancy is called hole

hole current: another type of current occurs at the valence level where the holes created by the free electron exist. Electrons remaining in the Valence Bond are still attached to their atoms and are not free to move randomly in the crystal structure as are the free electron, however a valence electron can move into a near by whole with little change in it's energy level thus leaving another hole where it came from. effectively the hole has more from one place to another in the crystal structure, this is called hole current.

(electrons in the valence bond are moving from one hole to another in the valence bond it self, but not to the conduction bond)