Why is Silicon Used for Computer Chips?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
964 words · ~4 min read
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Silicon Valley that part of California
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where CPUs are designed startups flourish and no one can afford to buy a
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house but did you ever stop to think about why it's called Silicon Valley why
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exactly does Silicon seem to be so universally used for electronics instead
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of some other material like copper graphite or potato well silic has a
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number of properties that make it unusual among chemical elements right
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now s ssts know of 118 elements and of
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those only six are commonly classified
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as metalloids silicon being one of them these metalloids exhibit metallik
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characteristics but aren't true metals
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usually they have a silvery shiny look like true Metals but instead of being
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malleable they're often quite brittle meaning they can break apart easily and
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although they can conduct electricity like metals they aren't quite as good at
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it which is where the word semiconductor comes from this semiconductivity is
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especially important because while obviously computers and other things
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that use microchips need electricity to run their whole principle of operation
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relies on being able to let electricity pass through certain transistors
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selectively which you can learn more about in this video a normal metallic
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conductor would let electrons through too easily meaning way too many
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transistors would light up at once and your CPU wouldn't be able to process
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instructions correctly which is okay if
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you want your computer to serve as a very expensive paper weight or a cheap
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one I guess as it were which is all fine and good then lonus but you still
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haven't answered the question why silicon specifically instead of some
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other semiconductor like geranium well
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although Silicon Valley might be an expensive place to live actual silicon
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is quite cheap and it's also pretty easy to find in the Earth's crust in fact
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silicon is one of the most common elements in the universe so it's fully
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possible that space fairing civilizations in some distant Galaxy are
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using silicon CPUs to play Plants versus
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humans or whatever silicon also has other benefits such as being able to
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operate well at a wide temperature range stock coolers am I right and it can be
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easily doped with other chemicals that are necessary for microprocessors to
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work for example it's quite easy to form an insulating layer of silicon dioxide
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just by sticking silicon into a hot furnace the tiny transistors in a CPU
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need insulated areas to further control and direct the flow of electricity with
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Precision so silicon's versatility makes it a natural choice but even though
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silicon has proven to be extremely useful it is not perfect although it's
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cheap and abundant there is a tradeoff with how quickly it can conduct
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electricity other semiconducting materials can move the electrons around
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faster meaning that they could be used to make higher performance processors
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albeit at a higher cost and another limitation of silicon will mean that it
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will not be the universal material in our processors for too much longer
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transistors keep being made smaller and smaller and smaller in order to make our
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chips more powerful and more power efficient but we're getting to the point
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where silicon can't be made into transistors much smaller than what we
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have already due to its chemical properties in fact Intel has already
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announced that for its 7 nanometer chips
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that could be released around 2020 it will be using something other than
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silicon to put that in context 7 nanometers is only about 35 atoms wide
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so there you have it while smaller transistors and faster CPUs may require
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more EX materials there's no doubt that
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the path to this future of tomorrow was paved with
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silicon I mean quite literally really if you think about it they used to use it
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in like Pottery in bricks they still do use it in bricks if you count like
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Minecraft speaking of bricks let's say
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do is head to freshbooks.com tequi and enter Techquickie in the how did you
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