In a non-intrinsic semiconductor under thermal equilibrium, the relation becomes (for low doping): where n0 is the concentration of conducting electrons, p0 is the conducting hole concentration, and ni is the material's intrinsic carrier concentration. The intrinsic carrier concentration varies between materials and is dependent on temperature. Silicon's ni, for example, is roughly 1.08×1010 cm−3 at 300 kelvins, about room temperature. In general, increased doping leads to increased conductivity due to the higher concentration of carriers. Degenerate (very highly doped) semiconductors have conductivity levels comparable to metals and are often used in integrated circuits as a replacement for metal. Often superscript plus and minus symbols are used to denote relative doping concentration in semiconductors. For example, n+ denotes an n-type semiconductor with a high, often degenerate, doping concentration. Similarly, p− would indicate a very lightly doped p-type material. Even degenerate levels of doping imply low concentrations of impurities with respect to the base semiconductor. In intrinsic crystalline silicon, there are approximately 5×1022 atoms/cm3. Doping concentration for silicon semiconductors may range anywhere from 1013 cm−3 to 1018 cm−3. Doping concentration above about 1018 cm−3 is considered degenerate at room temperature. Degenerately doped silicon contains a proportion of impurity to silicon on the order of parts per thousand. This proportion may be reduced to parts per billion in very lightly doped silicon. Typical concentration values fall somewhere in this range and are tailored to produce the desired properties in the device that the semiconductor is intended for. Effect on band structure Doping a semiconductor in a good crystal introduces allowed energy states within the band gap, but very close to the energy band that corresponds to the dopant type. In other words, electron donor impurities create states near the conduction band while electron acceptor impurities create states near the valence band. The gap between these energy states and the nearest energy band is usually referred to as dopant-site bonding energy or EB and is relatively small. For example, the EB for boron in silicon bulk is 0.045 eV, compared with silicon's band gap of about 1.12 eV. Because EB is so small, room temperature is hot enough to thermally ionize practically all of the dopant atoms and create free charge carriers in the conduction or valence bands. Dopants also have the important effect of shifting the energy bands relative to the Fermi level. The energy band that corresponds with the dopant with