Silicon (Si), a nonmetallic chemical element in the carbon family (Group 14 [IVa] of the periodic table). Silicon makes up 27.7 percent of Earth’s crust; it is the second most abundant element in the crust, being surpassed only by oxygen. The name silicon derives from the Latin silex or silicis, meaning “flint” or “hard stone.” Amorphous elemental silicon was first isolated and described as an element in 1824 by Jöns Jacob Berzelius, a Swedish chemist. Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica
Silica (SiO2) in the form of sharp flints were among the first tools made by humans. The ancient civilizations used other forms of silica such as rock crystal, and knew how to turn sand into glass. Considering silicon’s abundance, it is somewhat surprising that it aroused little curiosity among early chemists.
Attempts to reduce silica to its components by electrolysis had failed. In 1811, Joseph Gay Lussac and Louis Jacques Thénard reacted silicon tetrachloride with potassium metal and produced some very impure form of silicon. The credit for discovering silicon really goes to the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius of Stockholm who, in 1824, obtained silicon by heating potassium fluorosilicate with potassium. The product was contaminated with potassium silicide, but he removed this by stirring it with water, with which it reacts, and thereby obtained relatively pure silicon powder. Continue reading from The Royal Society of Chemistry
Silicon is the seventh-most abundant element in the universe and the second-most abundant element on the planet, after oxygen
Silicon is a semiconductor, meaning that it does conduct electricity. Unlike a typical metal, however, silicon gets better at conducting electricity as the temperature increases (metals get worse at conductivity at higher temperatures).
Silicon is used in various ways in solar cells and computer chips, with one example being a metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor, or MOSFET, the basic switch in many electronics. Continue reading from LiveScience
