On the one hand, a metal more or less by definition shares the outermost electrons of all its atoms. But on the other hand some metals and alloys of metals are distinctly less conductive than others- nicachrome heating elements for example. Could you have an alloy that in all its other bulk properties is what most people would call a “metal”, but conducts electricity poorly or not at all?
I don’t think nichrome is a particularly bad conductor of electricity, but rather is alloyed to have a fairly constant resistivity at all temperatures. As a rule, elemental metals have resistivities that are proportional to absolute temperature, and alloys generally have higher resistivity than the average of their components.
Certainly there’s a wide range of conductivities in elemental metals and alloys. Bismuth, for example, is quite a lousy conductor.
It depends on whom you ask where the boundary between metals and nonmetals is. Antimony, silicon, arsenic, bismuth, and boron are all debatable, if I remember right.
To an astronomer, everything bigger than helium is a metal.
Most chemistry texts classify boron, silicon, germanium, arsenic, antimony, tellurium, polonium, and astatine as “metalloids.”
Elements to the left of the metalloids on the periodic table are classified as metals. This would include bismuth.
Elements to the right of the metalloids on the periodic table are classified as nonmetals.
A few books will even try to call aluminum a metalloid, but that’s basically trying to force a pattern onto the periodic table that isn’t really there.
I know that I’m quite late to the game but I would like to throw in my two cents anyway just in case anyone becomes interested in this again.
What is a metal and what isn’t a metal really shouldn’t be decided based on where it lies on the periodic table. It should be decided by the structure of the unit cell of its crystal lattice when it solidifies. As far as electrical properties go, anything with an odd number of electrons per unit cell should be considered a conductor and hence a metal. Anything with an even number of electrons should be examined for an energy band overlap. If one is found, it is a metal, or likely what people call a metalloid. Although I’ve been reading on that and I’m not sure if that is the case. Regardless, anything with a direct band overlap is considered a metal as far as conductivity goes. Everything else is a semiconductor, semi-metal, or insulator/non-metal. If you would like to know why number of electrons per unit cell is the deciding factor, then read up on the Pauli exclusion principle.
P.S. My best guess for the reason that everything on the upper right of the periodic table is considered a nonmetal is because the majority of them are diatomic and therefore always have an even number of electrons. (Assuming they remain diatomic in their basis when they solidify)
I realized that I never really answered the initial question in my post. So here is my answer.
I suppose the buy in large answer would be no because, in conductivity and electrical properties, a metal is defined as a substance with available conduction electrons. It may have poor conductivity for a metal and poor conductivity compared to a semiconductor that is at the appropriate temperature but it should always, at least at the level of theory that I have reached, conduct better than an insulator otherwise it would be inappropriately classified.