Facts about Silicon

Silicon is similar to glass in that it is strong but brittle and prone to chipping.

Given that silicon is similar to carbon, particularly in its valency, some have pondered over the possibility of silicon-based life.

One can notice the color change in silicon nanopowder.

Given its importance in semiconductors and high-tech devices, its name has been used for the high-tech region known as Silicon Valley in California.

Silica occurs in minerals consisting of (practically) pure silicon dioxide in different crystalline forms.

Historically, a number of methods have been used to produce high-purity silicon.

Various biological systems contain silicon as an essential element.

The silicon produced via this process is called "metallurgical grade silicon" and is at least 98 percent pure.

Silicon also occurs as silicates (various minerals containing silicon, oxygen, and one or other metal).

The electronic configuration in the outermost shell of a silicon atom is the same as that of a carbon atom—both types of atoms have four bonding electrons.

Silicon has many known isotopes, with mass numbers ranging from 22 to 44.

Some bacteria and other forms of life, such as the protozoa radiolaria, have silicon dioxide skeletons, and the sea urchin has spines made of silicon dioxide.

In 1811, Gay-Lussac and Louis Jacques Thйnard probably prepared impure amorphous silicon through the heating of potassium with silicon tetrafluoride.

Trichlorosilane is the silicon compound most commonly used as the intermediate, although silicon tetrachloride and silane are also used.

Consequently, another solvent would be necessary to sustain silicon-based life forms.

Silicon is usually found in the form of silicon dioxide (also known as silica), and silicate.

Today, silicon is instead purified by converting it to a silicon compound that can be more easily purified than silicon itself, and then converting that silicon element back into pure silicon.

Elemental silicon has a gray color and a metallic luster, which increases with the size of the crystal.

When crushed, the silicon cracked so that the weaker impurity-rich regions were on the outside of the resulting grains of silicon.

The use of silicon in semiconductor devices demands a much greater purity than afforded by metallurgical grade silicon.

Silicon is a principal component of aerolites, which are a class of meteoroids, and also is a component of tektites, a natural form of glass.

In 2005, metallurgical grade silicon cost about $ 0.77 per pound ($1.70/kg).

Some have construed silicon-based life as existing under a computational substrate.

Silicon is also used in mechanical seals, caulking compounds, and high-temperature, silicon-based greases.

The majority of silicon crystals grown for device production are produced by the Czochralski process (CZ-Si), because it is the cheapest method available and is capable of producing large crystals.

Liquid silicon collects in the bottom of the furnace, and is then drained and cooled.

Silicon's inability to readily form multiple bonds, long silane chains, and rings severely limits the diversity of compounds that can be synthesized from it.

Measured by mass, silicon makes up 25.7 percent of the Earth's crust and is the second most abundant element on Earth, after oxygen.

The name silicon is derived from the Latin word, silex, meaning "flint" or "hard stone," corresponding to the materials now called "silica" or "silicates."

Using this method, silicon carbide, SiC, can form.

Pure silicon crystals are only occasionally found in nature; they can be found as inclusions with gold and in volcanic exhalations.

Sand, amethyst, agate, quartz, rock crystal, chalcedony, flint, jasper, and opal are some of the forms in which silicon dioxide appears.

Some silicon rings (cyclosilanes) have been synthesized and are analogous to the cycloalkanes formed by carbon, but the cyclosilanes are rare whereas the cycloalkanes are common.

Larger silicon compounds (silanes) that are analogous to common hydrocarbon chains are generally unstable, owing to the larger atomic radius of silicon and the correspondingly weaker silicon-silicon bond.

Silicon is commercially prepared by the reaction of high-purity silica with wood, charcoal, and coal, in an electric arc furnace using carbon electrodes.

Silica occurs in minerals consisting of (practically) pure silicon dioxide in different crystalline forms.

Given that some properties of silicon are similar to those of carbon, some individuals have proposed the possibility of silicon-based living organisms.

Early silicon purification techniques were based on the fact that if silicon is melted and re-solidified, the last parts of the mass to solidify contain most of the impurities.

In zone melting, also called zone refining, the first silicon purification method to be widely used industrially, rods of metallurgical grade silicon are heated to melt at one end.

Silicon (chemical element symbol Si, atomic number 14) is a member of a group of chemical elements classified as metalloids.

Under known conditions, silicon chemistry simply cannot begin to approach the diversity of organic chemistry, a crucial factor in carbon's role in biology.

When these gases are blown over silicon at high temperature, they decompose to high-purity silicon.

Polycrystalline silicon typically has impurity levels of less than 10?9.

Today, all the dislocation-free silicon crystals used in semiconductor industry with diameter 300mm or larger are grown by the Czochralski method, with purity level significantly improved.

The electrical resistance of single-crystal silicon significantly changes under the application of mechanical stress, due to what is called the "piezoresistive effect."