SILICON

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does silicon mean? 

• SILICON (noun)
  The noun SILICON has 1 sense:

1. a tetravalent nonmetallic element; next to oxygen it is the most abundant element in the earth's crust; occurs in clay and feldspar and granite and quartz and sand; used as a semiconductor in transistors

  Familiarity information: SILICON used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SILICON (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A tetravalent nonmetallic element; next to oxygen it is the most abundant element in the earth's crust; occurs in clay and feldspar and granite and quartz and sand; used as a semiconductor in transistors

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Synonyms:

atomic number 14; Si; silicon

Hypernyms ("silicon" is a kind of...):

chemical element; element (any of the more than 100 known substances (of which 92 occur naturally) that cannot be separated into simpler substances and that singly or in combination constitute all matter)

semiconducting material; semiconductor (a substance as germanium or silicon whose electrical conductivity is intermediate between that of a metal and an insulator; its conductivity increases with temperature and in the presence of impurities)

Holonyms ("silicon" is a substance of...):

quartz (a hard glossy mineral consisting of silicon dioxide in crystal form; present in most rocks (especially sandstone and granite); yellow sand is quartz with iron oxide impurities)

clay (a very fine-grained soil that is plastic when moist but hard when fired)

feldspar; felspar (any of a group of hard crystalline minerals that consist of aluminum silicates of potassium or sodium or calcium or barium)

granite (plutonic igneous rock having visibly crystalline texture; generally composed of feldspar and mica and quartz)

sand (a loose material consisting of grains of rock or coral)

silicone; silicone polymer (any of a large class of siloxanes that are unusually stable over a wide range of temperatures; used in lubricants and adhesives and coatings and synthetic rubber and electrical insulation)

 Context examples 

Scientists attacked this problem by studying the surface chemistry of silicon nanocrystals.

(Making higher energy light to fight cancer, National Science Foundation)

A nanometer-scale wire made of metal atoms, silicon, or other materials that conduct electricity.

(Nanowire, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

This layer is about 20 silicon atoms thick, or 16,000 times thinner than a human hair.

(Harvesting Electrical Power from Waste Heat, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Forms of the element silicon found in foods.

(Dietary Silicon, NCI Thesaurus/CRCH)

Scientists had assumed that, like with silicon materials, the more ordered they could make the materials, the more efficient they would be.

(‘Messy’ production of perovskite material increases solar cell efficiency, University of Cambridge)

Silica is a rock-forming compound containing silicon and oxygen, commonly found on Earth as quartz.

(Curiosity Rover Inspects Unusual Bedrock, NASA)

Snow is positively charged, while silicon is negatively charged.

(Nanogenerator Creates Electricity from Snowfall, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

A glassy or crystalline form of silicon dioxide.

(Crystalline Silica Quartz, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

One thing is certain: You should not shop for a machine or electronic items during this period for Mercury rules the moving parts in all machines and the silicon in electronics.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

These materials could be used for ‘spintronic’ applications, which could make cheap organic semiconductors competitive with silicon for future computing applications.

(Certain organic semiconducting materials can transport spin faster than they conduct charge, University of Cambridge)