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 lustre. Silicon is the second most abundant element in Earth’s ...

Foremost among silicon's distinguishing features is that, quite simply, there is a hell of a lot of it. After oxygen, it's the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust -- but don't expect to ...

Researchers at the Jülich Research Center and the Leibniz Institute for Innovative Microelectronics (IHP) have developed a material that has never existed before: a stable alloy of carbon, silicon, ...

There was no single moment when the modern electronics era began. No switch was flipped, no machine suddenly came to life. Instead, the transformation started from the simple realization that a common ...

Incorporating silicon into drug scaffolds could help to fine-tune their medicinal properties. The carbon-silicon bond is ...

Researchers in the UC Santa Barbara Materials Department have uncovered the elusive quantum mechanism by which energetic electrons break chemical bonds inside microelectronic devices—a detrimental ...

When sugarcane bagasse is burned, the ash contains silica. The race is on to extract this for various uses. Geoff Sperring/Shutterstock In some parts of South Africa’s Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal ...