Chemistry: The Element Silicon

THE ELEMENT SILICON.

The element silicon was named after the latin word for hard stone or flint (silex). It is considered to be the seventh most abundant element in the universe and the second most abundant on the earth, (27.7%) after oxygen. Being a stable tetrahedral, the element is chemically considered to be highly versatile or reactive.

Silicon is a tetravelant metalloid of atomic number 14, the element posses the properties of both metals and non-metals. Its chemical symbol is Si and it has two main allotropes; amorphous ( pure brownish powder) and crystalline (metallic gray). Silicon in its utra-pure form is a solid with a blue grayish metallic sheen and it is a solid at room temperature. The element has a standard atomic mass of 28.086

Humphry Davy, a British chemist and a rival to Antione however argued in 1800 that silicon was a compound and not a component as Lavoiser has earlier suggested basing his argument that silicon consited of metal properties. Jons Jacob Berzerlius was however credited for the elements discovery in 1824 being the first man to prove of its existence as an element. Berzerlius was able to successfully produce amorphous silicon through reacting potassium fluorosilicate with purifying the product into a pure brown silicon powder by repetitively washing the residual by-product with water in whch it reacts. This method, become the first to ever known to separate silicon from its tight bonds with oxygen and other elements and it paved way for other scientist such as Chemist Henry Deville who later succesfuky produced cystalline silicon through electrolyzing an impure melt of sodium aluminum chloride to produce aluminum silicide with the aluminum later removed with water to leave silicon

The silicone compound results as a mixture of silicon alongside organic polymers with the chemical formula of (R2SIO) whereby R would normally consist of an organic group such as methyl, ethyl and phenyl which, are mainly made up of an inorganic silicon-oxygen backbone alongside organic side groups that are attached to the four-coordinate silicon atoms. Discovered by Sir Ferdinand Kipping in1901, the compound has a low chemical reactivity, is non toxic and does not support microbiological growth hence it is highly suitable to use for surgicall