Energy & Green Tech
To increase the performance of solar panels, an international collaboration—including researchers from King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) and U of T Engineering—has created a bifacial, or two-sided, ...
Jan 12, 2021
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129
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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275
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
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
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
Energy & Green Tech
Treating silicon with carbon dioxide gas in plasma processing brings simplicity and control to a key step for making solar cells.
Oct 26, 2020
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64
Energy & Green Tech
Researchers working to maximize solar panel efficiency said layering advanced materials atop traditional silicon is a promising path to eke more energy out of sunlight. A new study shows that by using a precisely controlled ...
Oct 6, 2020
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89
Electronics & Semiconductors
Understanding how solar cell operation changes as it moves from the lab into the real world is essential for optimizing their design prior to mass production. KAUST researchers show how perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells ...
Sep 14, 2020
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50
Energy & Green Tech
Electrifying research by Clemson University scientists could lead to the creation of lighter, faster-charging batteries suitable for powering a spacesuit, or even a Mars rover. The research, which was funded by NASA, was ...
Aug 31, 2020
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140
Energy & Green Tech
Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have conducted the first global assessment into the most promising approaches to end-of-life management for solar photovoltaic (PV) modules.
Jul 14, 2020
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132
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
