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The electron volt is a unit of energy, it is e times V, so it is written eV. It is the amount of energy gained by a single unbound electron when it accelerates through an electrostatic potential difference of one volt. In SI units, it is the number which measures the charge of the electron with the unit changed from C to J.

1 eV = 1.602 176 53(14) J.

So an electron volt (electronvolt within NIST) is 1 volt (1 joule / 1 coulomb ) multiplied by the electron charge (1.602 176 53(14) coulomb ).

The electron volt is now accepted within SI, but its use has been quixotically discouraged by officials in the past. It is the most common unit of energy within physics, widely used in solid state, atomic, nuclear, and particle physics, often with SI prefixes m, k, M, G or T.

In chemistry, it is often useful to have the molar equivalent, that is the kinetic energy that would be gained by a mole of electrons passing through a potential difference of one volt. This is equal to 96.48538(2) kJ/mol. Atomic properties like the Ionization energy are often quoted in electron volts.

As a measurement of mass

By mass-energy equivalence, the electron volt is also a unit of mass. It is common in particle physics, where mass and energy are often interchanged, to use eV/c², or more commonly simply eV with c set to 1, as a unit of mass.

For example, an electron and a positron, each with a mass of 0.511 MeV, can annihilate to yield 1.022 MeV of energy. The proton has a mass of 0.938 GeV, making a GeV a very convenient unit of mass for particle physics.

1 GeV = 1.783 kg

The atomic mass unit, 1 gram divided by Avogadro's number, is almost the mass of a hydrogen atom, which is mostly the mass of the proton. To convert to MeV，use the formula:

1 amu = 931.4 MeV = .9314 GeV

1 MeV = 1.074·10^-3 amu

In some older documents, and in the name Bevatron, the symbol "BeV" is used, which stands for "billion-electron-volt"; it is equivalent to the GeV.

Since MeV as a unit is often used in nuclear energy equations, for example as in the stellar nuclear fusion process of carbon burning, among others the equation

¹²C + ¹²C

→

²⁰Ne + ⁴He + 4.617 MeV

Energy

For comparison:

200 MeV - total energy released in nuclear fission of one U-235 atom (on average; depends on the precise break up); this is 82 TJ/kg = 20 kt TNT / kg
210 MeV - average energy released in fission of one Pu-239 atom.
17.6 MeV - total energy released in fusion of Deuterium and Tritium to form Helium-4 (also on average); this is 0.41 PJ/kg of product produced
13.6 eV - energy required to ionize atomic hydrogen. Molecular bond energies are on the order of an eV per molecule.
1/40 eV - the thermal energy at room temperature. A single molecule in the air has an average kinetic energy 3/80 eV.

Conversion factor:

1 eV per amu is 96.5 MJ/kg

Photon properties

The energy E, frequency f, and wavelength λ of a photon are related by

E=hf=frac{hc}{lambda}= frac{1240~rm{nm}}{lambda}rm~eV

where h is Planck's constant and c is the speed of light. For example, the spectrum of visible light consists of wavelengths ranging from 400 nm to 700 nm. Photons of visible light therefore have energies ranging from

E_{min} = frac{1240~rm{nm}}{700~rm{nm}}rm~eV= 1.77~rm{eV}

E_{max} = frac{1240~rm{nm}}{400~rm{nm}}rm~eV = 3.10~rm{eV}

An electron volt is also the energy of an infrared photon with a wavelength of approximately 1240 nm. Similarly, 10eV would correspond to ultraviolet of wavelength 124 nm, and so on.

As a measurement for time and distance

In particle physics, distances and times are sometimes expressed in inverse electronvolts via the conversion factors

$hbar$ = 6.582 118 89(26) x 10^-16 eV s
$hbar c$ = 197.326 960 2(77) eV nm

In these units, the mean lifetime $tau$ of an unstable particle can be reexpressed in terms of its decay width $Gamma$ (in eV) via $Gamma = hbar/tau$ . For example, the B⁰ meson has a mean lifetime of 1.542(16) picoseconds, or a decay width of 4.269(44) x 10^-4 eV, and its mean decay length is $ctau$ = 462 $mu$ m.

Temperature

In certain fields, such as plasma physics, it is convenient to use the electronvolt as a unit of temperature. The conversion to kelvins (symbol: uppercase K) is defined by using k_B, the Boltzmann constant: