Common solar tech can power smart devices indoors
Any time you turn on a light at home or in the office, you are expending energy. But what if flipping the light switch meant producing energy too?
Aug 19, 2021
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483
Engineering
Any time you turn on a light at home or in the office, you are expending energy. But what if flipping the light switch meant producing energy too?
Aug 19, 2021
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483
Electronics & Semiconductors
Using a new fabrication technique, NIMS has developed a diamond field-effect transistor (FET) with high hole mobility, which allows reduced conduction loss and higher operational speed. This new FET also exhibits normally ...
Feb 24, 2022
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187
Engineering
(TechXplore)—Self healing chips—healing after radiation damage—could have an impact on interstellar spacecraft, according to reports. The news involves scientists at NASA and the Korean Institute of Science and Technology ...
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
Engineering
An innovative probe which can operate in temperatures as high as molten lava has been created by researchers.
Feb 29, 2024
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Engineering
Two-dimensional materials are expected to revolutionize the semiconductor industry. However, despite multiple studies that have reported prototype devices with promising properties for sensing and driving electrical current, ...
Mar 27, 2023
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185
Internet
Google on Wednesday said it is opening Bard, a rival to Microsoft-backed ChatGPT, to 180 countries as it expands use of artificial intelligence across its platform.
May 10, 2023
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164
Business
In recent weeks, some of Silicon Valley's most famous technologists have hailed a historically polarizing energy source—nuclear power—as a solution to both cutting carbon emissions and weaning the world off now-controversial ...
Mar 23, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
Imperial researchers are designing cheaper and more flexible solar energy materials, set to rival traditional rigid silicon panels.
Jan 12, 2017
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25
Electronics & Semiconductors
Researchers at Lancaster University are racing against time to find smart solutions to the rapidly advancing era of 'dark silicon'.
Sep 7, 2015
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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