Silicon semiconductors offer many benefits over other materials. They have a wide voltage handling capacity, are secure, and come from a highly abundant material. Because of that, silicon wafer manufacturing has grown incredibly these past few years.
However, many people have stated that silicon is the most abundant material on Earth’s crust. To help clear that up, we will answer that question.
The answer is no, silicon isn’t the most abundant material on Earth. That title belongs to oxygen, with 46.1% of Earth being covered by it. Right behind oxygen, silicon takes the second place with 28.2% of abundance.
When it comes to the composition of the universe, silicon is the 7th most abundant element, making up 0.005% of all the atoms.
As you can see, its abundance is one of the greatest benefits of silicon wafers.
A reservoir must be defined before the abundance of any given material can be determined. Any vast body that can be examined collectively, such as the ocean, atmosphere, or Earth's crust, is called a reservoir.
Because different chemical or mechanical processes are involved in creating each element, different reservoirs may contain varying relative amounts of each element.
The upper and lower crusts have quite different compositions, and the continental crust's composition varies greatly by location, which makes measuring elemental abundance challenging. That is why the figures we have are approximations only.
Although widely available, silicon doesn’t make a high-quality wafer on its own. It needs to undergo a series of complex processes until it reaches the final product many industries need.
If you want to learn more about those processes, request a quote!
