The element Silicon (Si) was discovered by Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1924. In essence, this element makes up 27.7% of the Earth’s crust by mass. Silicon is heat-resistant, electronically conductive, brittle, shiny, and is one of the fundamental constituents of the universe. Because of this, silicon is highly abundant and is used in a variety of different consumer products. For example, silicon is used to make Si wafers for electronic products. Read about some of the uses of silicon that go unnoticed in our daily lives.
In general, solar panels heavily depend on silicon to function. Silicon wafers are used in making solar panels for their semiconducting properties. Additionally, silicon wafers are abundant making them easy to access. The element silicon has a reasonable solar band efficiency, making it an ideal for solar panels.
Silicon wafer electronics are highly powerful, and are used in high power lasers. In fact, the most powerful silicon-based laser reached a temperature of 111 degrees Celsius. Additionally the threshold current per unit area was 200A/Cm^2.
Many electronic devices use silicon wafers to function properly. Some of these include cellular phones, laptops, and any other device that uses a circuit board. Essentially, high-purity silicon is made by thermally decomposing the trichlorosilane. Next, the silicon goes through the recrystallization process. Finally it can be used as a semiconductor for many of the electronics we use today.
Often times, we are using silicon and not even realize it. Si wafers play a role in our daily lives as they make many aspects of modern technology possible. Contact Wafer World if you are want to learn more about silicon wafers.
