Swedish chemist Jons Berzelius (1779-1848) discovered silicon in 1823, but humans had been using the element—in the form of compounds known as silicates—for thousands of years. Indeed, silicon may have been one of the first elements formed, many millions of years before life appeared on this planet. Geologists believe that the Earth was once composed primarily of molten iron, oxygen, silicon, and aluminum, still the predominant elements in the planet's crust. Because iron has a greater atomic mass, it settled toward the center, while the more lightweight elements rose to the surface.
Silicon is found in everything from the Sun and other stars, as well as meteorites, to plants and animal bones. Many hundreds of minerals on Earth contain silicon and oxygen in various forms: for instance, silicon and oxygen form silica (SiO 2 ), commonly known as sand. This sand is mixed with lime and soda (sodium carbonate), as well other substances, to make glass. The purest varieties of silica form quartz, known for its clear crystals, while impure quartz forms crystals of semiprecious gems such as amethyst, opal, and agate.
Silicon is directly below carbon on the periodic table, and the elements in that group (which includes germanium, selenium, and lead) are sometimes called the "carbon family." Like carbon, silicon forms a huge array of compounds, because it has four electrons to share in chemical bonding, and thus can form long strings of atoms. Because silicon atoms are much larger than carbon atoms, however, not as many other atoms can get close to silicon. Thus the number of possible compounds involving silicon—though still quite impressive—is less than the many millions of carbon-based compounds
Often silicon is combined with oxygen in long chains that use the oxygen atoms as separators. Because oxygen has a valence of two, meaning that it can bond to two other atoms at a time, it bonds easily between two other silicon atoms. The silicon, meanwhile, has two other electrons to use in bonding, so it typically attaches to two more, non-bridging, oxygen atoms. Compounds of this type are known as silicates, and most of the rocks and clay on Earth—with the exception of lime, which is calcium oxide—are silicates made up of combinations of silicon, oxygen, and various metals such as aluminum, iron, sodium, and potassium.
Silicones are another variety of compound involving silicon atoms strung together by bridging oxygen atoms. Instead of attaching to two other, non-bridging oxygen atoms, as in a silicate, the silicon atoms in a silicone attach to organic groups—that is, molecules containing carbon. Because silicones often resemble organic compounds such as oils, greases, and rubber, silicone oils are frequently used in place of organic petroleum as a lubricant because they can with stand greater variations in temperature. Silicone rubbers are used in everything from bouncing balls to space vehicles. And because the body tolerates the introduction of silicone implants better than it does organic ones, silicones are used in surgical implants as well.
Silicones are also present in electrical insulators, rust preventives, fabric softeners, hair sprays, hand creams, furniture and automobile polishes, paints, adhesives (including bathtub sealers), and chewing gum. Yet even this list does not exhaust the many applications of elemental silicon, as opposed to silicone.
Due to its semi-metallic qualities, silicon is used as a semiconductor of electricity. Computer chips are tiny slices of ultra-pure silicon, etched with as many as half a million microscopic and intricately connected electronic circuits. These chips manipulate voltages using binary codes, for which 1 means "voltage on" and 0 means "voltage off." By means of these pulses, silicon chips perform multitudes of calculations in seconds—calculations that would take humans hours or months or even years.
A porous form of silica, known as silica gel, absorbs water vapor from the air, and is often packed alongside moisture-sensitive products such as electronics components, in order to keep them dry. Silicon carbine, an extremely hard crystalline material manufactured by fusing sand with coke (almost pure carbon) at high temperatures, has applications as an abrasive.
Silicon is unquestionably the "star" of the metalloids, but several other elements in this broad grouping have been known since ancient times. Among these is arsenic, well-known from many a detective novel. Highly poisonous, it is often a fixture of such stories: in a typical plot, a greedy nephew drops some arsenic into the tea of an elderly aunt who has left money to him in her will, and it is up to the detective/hero/heroine to uncover the details behind this dastardly scheme. The use of arsenic as a prop in such tales had already become something of a cliché by 1941, when "Arsenic and Old Lace," a play by Joseph Kesselring that satirized an old-fashioned "whodunit," made its debut on Broadway.
Known since ancient times, arsenic is named after the Greek word arsenikon , meaning "yellow orpiment." (Orpiment is arsenic trisulfide, or As 2 S 3 .) But the Greeks were not the only peoples in antiquity who knew of arsenic and its toxic properties: the Egyptians and Chinese were likewise familiar with it. Alchemists took an interest in arsenic, and one of them, Albertus Magnus (1193-1280)—a German physician who contributed significantly to the rebirth of interest in science during the late Middle Ages—probably isolated the element from arsenic trisulfide in about 1250.
Arsenic is more than just a prop in a detective story. (And in fact it is not a very effective poison for a murderer who hopes to get away with his crime: traces of arsenic remain in the body of a murder victim—even in the person's hair—for years after death.) Today, arsenic is used for purposes such as bronzing, and for hardening and improving the sphericity (roundness) of lead shot in shotgun shells.
In solid-state devices such as transistors, arsenic or antimony is used for the purposes of "doping." This may sound like another version of the whodunit-style poisoning described above, but actually doping involves the alteration of chemical properties by deliberately introducing impurities. Through the doping of silicon, its electrical conductivity is improved.
In ancient times, antimony was known by the Latin name stibium ; hence its chemical symbol of Sb. The word, which can be deciphered as "a metal that does not occur by itself," has roots much older than the Roman civilization, however. Many centuries before the rise of the Romans, the biblical prophet Jeremiah railed against women's use of "stibic stone" to paint their faces. In fact, stibic stone is antimony (III) sulfide, or Sb 2 S 3 , a black mineral which has long been used as an eyeliner.
During the Middle Ages, alchemists studied antimony and its compounds, but the first scientist to distinguish between the compounds and the element itself was French chemist Jean-Baptiste Buquet, in 1771. During the early modern era, antimony was used in making bells, tools, and type for printing presses, because its addition to an alloy strengthened the other metals. Today, antimony is added to lead in storage batteries to make the lead harder and stronger. It is still used in metal type, as well as bullets and cable sheathing.
Antimony was a component in early varieties of matches, but by 1855, the less volatile phosphorus had replaced it. In altered form, however, antimony still appears in some matches. Oxides and sulfides of antimony are also applied in paints, ceramics, fireworks, pharmaceuticals, and other products. These are also utilized for dyeing cloth and fireproofing materials. In addition, as noted above with regard to arsenic, antimony is applied for the doping of silicon and other materials in semiconductors, particularly those that use infrared detectors.
When Hungarian chemist Joseph Ramacsaházy first described tellurium in the mid-eighteenth century, he did so in alchemical terms, referring to it as "unripe gold." This reflected the belief, still lingering from the Middle Ages, that metals "grow" to higher states. At least part of his confusion is understandable, since the element did appear in minerals that also contained gold.
A few years later, Baron Franz Joseph Müller von Reichenstein, an Austrian mining inspector in Transylvania, analyzed the substance, which he concluded was bismuth sulfide. Later he changed his mind, then subjected the material to a series of tests over a period of many years, until finally he sent a sample to the distinguished German chemist, Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817). Klaproth concluded that it was indeed a new element, and suggested the Latin word tellus, for "earth," as a name.
Grayish-white and lustrous, tellurium looks like a metal, but it is much more brittle than most metallic elements. Furthermore, it is a semiconductor, which further separates it from the typically conductive metals. Its semiconductive properties have led to applications in building electronic components. Added to copper and stainless steel, tellurium improves the machinability of those metals; in addition, tellurium compounds are used for the coloring of glass, porcelain, enamel, and ceramics.
Germanium. Both named after European countries, germanium and polonium were identified much later than the other metalloids. In 1871, two years after he created his famous periodic table, Russian chemist Dmitri Ivanovitch Mendeleev (1834-1907) predicted the existence of an element he called "eka-silicon." This turned out to be germanium, which sits directly beneath silicon on the periodic table, and which was discovered in 1886 by German chemist Clemens Alexander Winkler (1838-1904).
Germanium is principally used as a doping agent in making transistor elements. It is also used as a phosphor in fluorescent lamps. In addition, germanium and germanium oxide, transparent to the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, are present in infrared spectroscopes and infrared detectors.
While the applications of germanium are limited compared to those of, say, silicon, polonium is useful primarily as a source of neutrons in atomic laboratories—hardly something with which a person comes in contact during the course of an ordinary day. Yet the isolation of polonium by Polish-French physicist and chemist Marie Curie (1867-1934), along with her husband Pierre (1859-1906), a French physicist, was a prelude to one of the greatest stories in the history of chemistry.
Setting out to find radioactive elements other than uranium, the Curies refined a large quantity of pitchblende, an ore commonly found in uranium mines. Within a year, they had discovered polonium, which Marie named after her homeland. Polonium is about 100 times as radioactive as uranium, but the Curies were certain that yet another element lay in the pitch-blende, and they devoted the next four years to the exhausting process of isolating it. The story of radium, its isolation, and the great price Marie Curie paid for working with radioactive materials is discussed in the essay on Alkaline Earth Metals.
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