In
science and
engineering, an intrinsic property is a
property
Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, re ...
of a specified subject that exists itself or within the subject. An extrinsic property is not essential or inherent to the subject that is being characterized. For example,
mass is an intrinsic property of any
physical object, whereas
weight is an extrinsic property that depends on the strength of the
gravitational field in which the object is placed.
Applications in science and engineering
In
materials science, an intrinsic property is independent of how much of a material is present and is independent of the form of the material, e.g., one large piece or a collection of small particles. Intrinsic properties are dependent mainly on the fundamental chemical composition and
structure of the material. Extrinsic properties are differentiated as being dependent on the presence of avoidable chemical contaminants or structural defects.
In
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...
, intrinsic effects originate from inside an
organism or
cell, such as an
autoimmune disease or
intrinsic immunity.
In
electronics
Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...
and
optics, intrinsic properties of devices (or systems of devices) are generally those that are free from the influence of various types of non-essential defects. Such defects may arise as a consequence of design imperfections, manufacturing errors, or operational extremes and can produce distinctive and often undesirable extrinsic properties. The identification, optimization, and control of both intrinsic and extrinsic properties are among the engineering tasks necessary to achieve the high performance and
reliability of modern electrical and optical systems.
[ Ueda, Osamu and Pearton, Stephen J. editors, Materials and Reliability Handbook for Semiconductor Optical and Electron Devices, 2013, , ]
See also
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Intensive and extensive properties
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Motivation
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Intrinsic And Extrinsic Properties.
Abstraction
Ontology
Scientific phenomena