The Book of Ingeniously Daring Chemistry by Sean Connolly

Author:Sean Connolly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Published: 2018-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Silicon Valley

Many of the world’s leading high-tech companies, such as Google, Facebook, and Apple, are based near California’s Pacific coast, just south of San Francisco. Modern life has been transformed many times by the products developed in that relatively small area. Since silicon is a central ingredient in most of those products, this international center of research and development is known as Silicon Valley.

So how does silicon come into play in all of this? Well, atoms of silicon, in a normal state, have their four outer electrons bonded with four outer electrons of other silicon atoms. This “locked tight” arrangement leads the silicon to form crystals, making it a poor conductor. When you add a small amount of another element, such as boron or phosphorus, however, it changes the way the silicon crystals behave with electrical currents. The new element can fit into the crystal structure, but it might have five (rather than four) outer electrons. Four of those five electrons would bond with four neighboring silicon electrons, but the extra electron would be free to carry a charge. This process is called “doping,” and it’s really useful because it enables engineers to turn silicon into a conductor, an insulator, or something that allows electrical current in one direction only. The term for this “not quite a real conductor” is “semiconductor,” and semiconductors form the backbone of modern electrical equipment.

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