When was silicon invented

Silicon is found in nature in the form of silicon dioxide like some types of sand and many rocks. The extraction of silicon from silicon dioxide is extremely energy intensive; it requires megajoules of primary energy per kilogram to process high-grade silicon for computer chips or solar panels.

In other words there will never be a shortage of silicon for any use that people have conceived of; the energy to process it will always be the limiting factor. Since silicon has so many different forms that it appears in, it is very useful. When in the form of sand or clay, silicon can be used to make brick and other building materials.

As a silicate, silicon is used for making enamels and pottery. Silica, another form of silicon, is the main ingredient in glass and can also be used in mechanical devices. Extremely pure silicon is useful as a semiconductor when doped with boron , gallium , phosphorus , or arsenic. In , J. Hyde ran the first research to produce commercial silicones. Kipping did not establish the use of the silicone elastomer , and he believed there were no practical uses for the material.

In the meantime, R. Rochow, at the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, developed different methods for silicones synthesis, which could be used on an industrial scale. In the same decade, Dr. Franklin Hyde of Corning Glass produced the first commercially useful silicone product, a silicone resin for impregnating and coating glass cloth used in electrical insulation.

In , James Wright, a GE engineer, was looking for a rubber substitute. That sand is made up of silicon. Imagine how much sand is on all of the beaches of the world. Almost all of it is silicon. Glass Guess what? All that glass you see is made from silicon. Scientists take sand and melt it down. When it has melted they take all that silicon and make glass.

Read on. In nature, silicon is no loner. It's usually found linked up with a pair of oxygen molecules as silicon dioxide, otherwise known as silica. Quartz, an abundant ingredient in sand, is made up of non-crystallized silica. Silicon is neither metal nor non-metal; it's a metalloid, an element that falls somewhere between the two. The category of metalloid is something of a gray area, with no firm definition of what fits the bill, but metalloids generally have properties of both metals and non-metals.

They look metallic, but conduct electricity only intermediately well. 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.

Berzelius heated silica with potassium to purify silicon, according to the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility , but today the refinement process heats carbon with silica in the form of sand to isolate the element.

Silicon is a main ingredient in very low-tech creations, including bricks and ceramics. But the high-tech stuff is where the element really makes its mark.