Business
An autonomous vehicle company acquired this year by Amazon has unveiled a four-person "robo-taxi," a compact, multidirectional vehicle designed for dense, urban environments.
Dec 14, 2020
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Electronics & Semiconductors
Light-emitting diodes—LEDs—can do way more than illuminate your living room. These light sources are useful microelectronics too.
Dec 14, 2020
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62
Business
Tech giant Oracle Corp. said Friday it will move its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, and let many employees choose their office locations and decide whether to work from home.
Dec 12, 2020
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7
Electronics & Semiconductors
For decades, one material has so dominated the production of computer chips and transistors that the tech capital of the world—Silicon Valley—bears its name. But silicon's reign may not last forever.
Dec 9, 2020
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69
Other
With its rows of sleek computers and ultra-modern study methods, Morocco's 1337 campus is a dream come true for budding geeks, in a country where IT skills are in high demand.
Dec 7, 2020
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5
Engineering
Most solar cells today are made with refined silicon that turns sunlight into clean electricity. Unfortunately, the process of refining silicon is far from clean, requiring vast amounts of energy from carbon-emitting power ...
Nov 25, 2020
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704
Software
Former Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer began her comeback to the tech scene Wednesday with the launch of a new mobile app aimed at helping people organize their contacts.
Nov 18, 2020
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5
Business
Silicon Valley is welcoming the election of Joe Biden as US president even as it girds for a series of battles over tech policy in Washington.
Nov 10, 2020
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4
Consumer & Gadgets
oApple on Monday sent out invitations to yet another online event, this one expected to star new Mac computers powered by chips of the tech giant's own design.
Nov 2, 2020
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7
Business
Apple shares were sent reeling Thursday on word of a steep drop in sales of iPhones, which are at the heart of the tech titan's money-making engine.
Oct 30, 2020
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Silicon (pronounced /ˈsɪlɨkən/ or /ˈsɪlɨkɒn/, Latin: silicium) is the most common metalloid. It is a chemical element, which has the symbol Si and atomic number 14. The atomic mass is 28.0855. A tetravalent metalloid, silicon is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon. As the eighth most common element in the universe by mass, silicon very rarely occurs as the pure free element in nature, but is more widely distributed in dusts, planetoids and planets as various forms of silicon dioxide (silica) or silicates. On Earth, silicon is the second most abundant element (after oxygen) in the crust, making up 25.7% of the crust by mass.
Silicon has many industrial uses. It is the principal component of most semiconductor devices, most importantly integrated circuits or microchips. Silicon is widely used in semiconductors because it remains a semiconductor at higher temperatures than the semiconductor germanium and because its native oxide is easily grown in a furnace and forms a better semiconductor/dielectric interface than any other material.
In the form of silica and silicates, silicon forms useful glasses, cements, and ceramics. It is also a constituent of silicones, a class-name for various synthetic plastic substances made of silicon, oxygen, carbon and hydrogen, often confused with silicon itself.
Silicon is an essential element in biology, although only tiny traces of it appear to be required by animals. It is much more important to the metabolism of plants, particularly many grasses, and silicic acid (a type of silica) forms the basis of the striking array of protective shells of the microscopic diatoms.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
