**2. Semiconductors**

It was 1782 when Alessandro Volta used for the first time the term "semiconducting". One century later, in 1883, Michael Faraday documented the first observation of a semiconductor effect. Faraday noted that the electrical resistance of silver sulphide decreased with increasing temperature, showing a behaviour opposite to that of metals (Łukasiak & Jakubowski, 2010).

Nowadays, everywhere we look, we can certainly see articles that contain semiconductors. The modern microelectronics applications are based on semiconductor technologies. Moreover, building materials, health care products, materials for special applications and much more, often employ semiconductors due to their chemical and physical properties. It is sufficient to write "semiconductor applications" into any internet search engine to get many tens of millions of responses.
