Mechanical pencil Mechanical pencil A mechanical pencil (US English) or propelling pencil (UK English), also clutch pencil, is a pencil with a replaceable and mechanically extendable solid pigment core called a "lead" . The lead, often made of graphite, is not bonded to the outer casing, and can be mechanically extended as its point is worn away. Other names include microtip pencil, automatic pencil, drafting pencil, technical pencil, click pencil, pump pen, pump pencil, leadholder, pen pencil (Indian English), and lead pencil (Bangladeshi and American English). Mechanical pencils are used to provide lines of constant width without sharpening in technical drawing and
Lead tin telluride Lead tin telluride Lead tin telluride, also referred to as PbSnTe or PbSnTe, is a ternary alloy of lead, tin and tellurium, generally made by alloying either tin into lead telluride or lead into tin telluride. It is a IV-VI narrow band gap semiconductor material. The band gap of PbSnTe is tuned by varying the composition(x) in the material. SnTe can be alloyed with Pb (or PbTe with Sn) in order to tune the band gap from 0.29 eV (PbTe) to 0.18 eV (SnTe). It is important to note that unlike II-VI chalcogenides, e.g. cadmium, mercury and zinc chalcogenides, the