Lavoisier first discovered silicon in rock in 1787. In 1800, however, Davy mistook it for a compound. In 1811 gay-Lussac and Thenard may have prepared impure amorphous silicon by heating elemental potassium and silicon tetrafluoride together. Silicon was first discovered as an element by Berzelius in 1823 and amorphous silicon was refined a year later using much the same method used by Gay-Glussac. He then purified the silicon by repeated cleaning.
Silicon metal name origin?
Silicon comes from the Latin word silex,silicis, meaning flint. In the early years of the Republic of China, scholars originally translated the element as "si" and made it read as "Xi" (xi can be read as the Chinese character qi). (Also, the word "si" was then interpreted as the distant version of the Chinese character "huo".) However, under the time and space at that time, because pinyin scheme has not been popularized, generally many misread as GUI. The chemical Society noticed this problem and coined the word "silicon" to avoid mispronunciation. Taiwan still uses the word "silicon". Mainland China in February 1953, the Chinese Academy of Sciences convened a national chemicals named expand symposium, some scholars to "si" and other chemical elements "tin" and "se" homophones, were easily confused by changing back to the original name and published "silicon" and read "GUI", but did not realize the "silicon" actually this should also be read xi. Interestingly, words such as silicosis and silicosis steel sheet still use silicon. In Hong Kong, both are used, but "silicon" is more commonly used.
In industry, silicon metal is usually made by reducing silicon dioxide from carbon in an electric furnace. Chemical reaction equation: SiO2 + 2C → Si + 2CO. The resulting silicon is 97 to 98 percent pure and is called silicon metal. After melting, recrystallization, impurities removed with acid, the purity of 99.7~99.8% silicon metal was obtained. If you want to make it into semiconductor silicon, but also into a liquid or gas form easy to purify, and then through distillation, decomposition process to get polysilicon. To obtain high purity silicon, further purification is required.
The silicon content in silicon metal is very high, up to about 98%, so the properties of silicon metal and silicon are similar. What are the properties of silicon metal? Silicon metal has semiconductor properties, the band gap (300K) is 1.107 electron volts, the intrinsic resistivity (300K) is 2.3×105 ohm • cm, the electron mobility (20℃) is 1350 cm/(v • s), the hole mobility (20℃) is 480 cm 2 / (v • s), The electron diffusion coefficient (300K) is 34.6 cm 2 / s, and the hole diffusion coefficient (300K) is 12.3 cm 2 / s.
Silicon metal is also the raw material for ultra-pure silicon in the electronics industry. Silicon is widely used for smelting ferrosilicon alloys as alloying elements in the iron and steel industry and as reducing agents in many kinds of metal smelting. Silicon is also a good component of aluminum alloys, most cast aluminum alloys contain silicon. Silicon is the raw material of ultra-pure silicon in electronic industry. Electronic devices made of ultra-pure semiconductor monocrystalline silicon have the advantages of small size, light weight, good reliability and long life. High-power transistors, rectifiers and solar cells made from single crystals of silicon mixed with certain trace impurities are better than those made from single crystals of germanium.
