Fishman continued, "Take silicon, for example—the second most abundant element in Earth's crust and ... thick layers—almost 200 micrometers of pure crystalline material—to effectively ...

Why silicon? Well, it is often said that elements close to each other in the periodic table ... he obtained a dark material that he could then burn and convert back to pure silica. Where he pushed, ...

the discovery of this element is usually credited to Berzelius, who in 1824 added extra washings to isolate pure silicon. It is now produced on a large scale by heating silica with carbon in an ...

Pure silicon is not conductive. However, it can be made conductive by adding other elements to its crystalline structure, which then become known as "n-type" or "p-type" silicon. N-type silicon is ...

Researchers have come up with a way to turn silicon into a direct bandgap semiconductor, opening the door to the manufacture of ultrathin silicon solar cells.