Silicon

Position of silicon in the periodic table.

Silicon sample.

Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a metalloid. It is relatively unreactive.

Uses

Most silicon is used commercially without being separated, often with very little processing of the natural minerals. Such use includes industrial construction with clays, silica sand, and stone. Silicates are used in Portland cement for mortar and stucco, and mixed with silica sand and gravel to make concrete. They are also used in whiteware ceramics such as porcelain, and in traditional silicate-based soda-lime glass and many other specialty glasses.

Silicon compounds such as silicon carbide are used as abrasives and components of high-strength ceramics. Silicon is the basis of the widely used synthetic polymers called silicones. The small portion of very highly purified elemental silicon used in semiconductor electronics is essential to the transistors and integrated circuit chips used in most modern technology such as smartphones and other computers.

Dependencies

• Silicon
  • Ceramic
  • Clay
  • Glass
  • Stone
• Gravel
• Sand
  • Concrete

See also

• Arsenic
• Boron
• Chemical elements

References

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Silicon, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).