Silicon has how many electrons

The number of protons, neutrons and electrons in an atom can be determined by a simple set of rules. The number of protons in the atomic nucleus equals the atomic number Z. The number of electrons in a neutral atom equals the number of protons. Where are the protons and neutrons in silicon? The average silicon atom has fourteen protons, fourteen electrons, and most have 14 neutrons. It is a diagram of a silicon atom. This shows the 14 protons in the nucleus and where the 14 electrons are.

The four electrons marked green in the outer ring are the valence electrons. How many protons, neutrons and electrons does a neutral silicon atom contain? The atomic number equals the number of protons in the atom, so silicon has 14 protons. In the case of a neutral species, the number of protons corresponds to the number of electrons, so silicon also has 14 electrons.

The mass number is the number of protons plus neutrons, so 28 to 14 protons equals 14 neutrons. The chemical properties of the atom are determined by the number of protons, in fact, by number and arrangement of electrons. It is the Pauli exclusion principle that requires the electrons in an atom to occupy different energy levels instead of them all condensing in the ground state.

This fact has key implications for the building up of the periodic table of elements. The first two columns on the left side of the periodic table are where the s subshells are being occupied. Because of this, the first two rows of the periodic table are labeled the s block.

Similarly, the p block are the right-most six columns of the periodic table, the d block is the middle 10 columns of the periodic table, while the f block is the column section that is normally depicted as detached from the main body of the periodic table. It could be part of the main body, but then the periodic table would be rather long and cumbersome.

For atoms with many electrons, this notation can become lengthy and so an abbreviated notation is used. The electron configuration can be visualized as the core electrons, equivalent to the noble gas of the preceding period, and the valence electrons e. Oxidation states are typically represented by integers which may be positive, zero, or negative.

Most elements have more than one possible oxidation state. An element that is not combined with any other different elements has an oxidation state of 0. Oxidation state 0 occurs for all elements — it is simply the element in its elemental form. An atom of an element in a compound will have a positive oxidation state if it has had electrons removed.

Similarly, adding electrons results in a negative oxidation state. We have also distinguish between the possible and common oxidation states of every element. Main Menu. About Protons. About Neutrons. About Electrons and Electron Configuration.

Oxidation States Oxidation states are typically represented by integers which may be positive, zero, or negative. Properties of other elements.

Other properties of Silicon. Neutron Number. Decay Mode. These are used to make dynamo and transformer plates, engine blocks, cylinder heads and machine tools and to deoxidise steel.

Silicon is also used to make silicones. These are silicon-oxygen polymers with methyl groups attached. Silicone oil is a lubricant and is added to some cosmetics and hair conditioners. Silicone rubber is used as a waterproof sealant in bathrooms and around windows, pipes and roofs.

The element silicon is used extensively as a semiconductor in solid-state devices in the computer and microelectronics industries. For this, hyperpure silicon is needed. The silicon is selectively doped with tiny amounts of boron, gallium, phosphorus or arsenic to control its electrical properties.

Granite and most other rocks are complex silicates, and these are used for civil engineering projects. Sand silicon dioxide or silica and clay aluminium silicate are used to make concrete and cement. Sand is also the principal ingredient of glass, which has thousands of uses. Silicon, as silicate, is present in pottery, enamels and high-temperature ceramics.

Biological role. Silicon is essential to plant life but its use in animal cells is uncertain. Phytoliths are tiny particles of silica that form within some plants. Since these particles do not rot they remain in fossils and provide us with useful evolutionary evidence. Silicon is non-toxic but some silicates, such as asbestos, are carcinogenic. Workers, such as miners and stonecutters, who are exposed to siliceous dust can develop a serious lung disease called silicosis.

Natural abundance. Silicon makes up It does not occur uncombined in nature but occurs chiefly as the oxide silica and as silicates. The oxide includes sand, quartz, rock crystal, amethyst, agate, flint and opal. The silicate form includes asbestos, granite, hornblende, feldspar, clay and mica.

Elemental silicon is produced commercially by reducing sand with carbon in an electric furnace. High-purity silicon, for the electronics industry, is prepared by the thermal decomposition of ultra-pure trichlorosilane, followed by recrystallisation. Help text not available for this section currently. Elements and Periodic Table History. Silica SiO 2 in the form of sharp flints were among the first tools made by humans. The ancient civilizations used other forms of silica such as rock crystal, and knew how to turn sand into glass.

Attempts to reduce silica to its components by electrolysis had failed. The product was contaminated with potassium silicide, but he removed this by stirring it with water, with which it reacts, and thereby obtained relatively pure silicon powder. Atomic data. Bond enthalpies. Glossary Common oxidation states The oxidation state of an atom is a measure of the degree of oxidation of an atom.

Oxidation states and isotopes. Glossary Data for this section been provided by the British Geological Survey. Relative supply risk An integrated supply risk index from 1 very low risk to 10 very high risk.

Recycling rate The percentage of a commodity which is recycled. Substitutability The availability of suitable substitutes for a given commodity. Reserve distribution The percentage of the world reserves located in the country with the largest reserves.

Political stability of top producer A percentile rank for the political stability of the top producing country, derived from World Bank governance indicators.

Political stability of top reserve holder A percentile rank for the political stability of the country with the largest reserves, derived from World Bank governance indicators.

Supply risk. Young's modulus A measure of the stiffness of a substance. Shear modulus A measure of how difficult it is to deform a material. Bulk modulus A measure of how difficult it is to compress a substance. Vapour pressure A measure of the propensity of a substance to evaporate.

Pressure and temperature data — advanced. Listen to Silicon Podcast Transcript :. You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World , the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. For this week's element we enter the world of science fiction to explore life in outer space. Here's Andrea Sella. When I was about 12, my friends and I went through a phase of reading science fiction. There the were the fantastic worlds of Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven and Robert Heinlein, involving impossible adventures on mysterious planets - the successes of the Apollo space programme at the time only helped us suspend our disbelief.

One of the themes I remember from these stories was the idea that alien life forms, often based around the element silicon, abounded elsewhere in the universe. Why silicon? Well, it is often said that elements close to each other in the periodic table share similar properties and so, seduced by the age-old red herring that "carbon is the element of life", the writers selected the element below it, silicon. I was reminded of these readings a couple of weeks ago when I went to see an exhibition of work by a couple of friends of mine.

Called "Stone Hole" it consisted of stunning panoramic photographs taken at extremely high resolution inside sea caves in Cornwall. As we wandered through the gallery a thought occurred to me. Silicate rocks - those in which silicon is surrounded tetrahedrally by four oxygen atoms - exist in an astonishing variety, the differences being determined by how the tetrahedra building blocks link together, and what other elements are present to complete the picture.

When the tetrahedra link one to the next, one gets a mad tangle of chains looking like an enormous pot of spaghetti - the sorts of structures one gets in ordinary glass. The purest of these chain-like materials is silicon dioxide - silica - found quite commonly in nature as the colourless mineral quartz or rock crystal. In good, crystalline quartz, the chains are arranged in beautiful helices and these can all spiral to the left. Or to the right.

When this happens the crystals that result are exact mirror images of each other. But not superimposable - like left and right shoes. To a chemist, these crystals are chiral, a property once thought to be the exclusive property of the element carbon, and chirality, in turn, was imagined to be a fundamental feature of life itself. Yet here it is, in the cold, inorganic world of silicon. Most grandiose of all, one can make porous 3D structures - a bit like molecular honeycombs - particularly in the presence of other tetrahedral linkers based on aluminium.

These spectacular materials are called the zeolites, or molecular sieves. By carefully tailoring the synthetic conditions, one can build material in which the pores and cavities have well defined sizes - now you have a material that can be used like a lobster traps, to catch molecules or ions of appropriate size.

But what of the element itself? Freeing it from oxygen is tough, it hangs on like grim death and requires brutal conditions. It was Humphrey Davy, the Cornish chemist and showman, who first began to suspect that silica must be a compound, not an element. He applied electric currents to molten alkalis and salts and to his astonishment and delight, isolated some spectacularly reactive metals, including potassium.

He now moved on to see what potassium could do. Passing potassium vapour over some silica he obtained a dark material that he could then burn and convert back to pure silica. Where he pushed, others followed. Silicon's properties are neither fish nor fowl. Dark gray in colour and with a very glossy glass-like sheen, it looks like a metal but is in fact quite a poor conductor of electricity, and there in many ways, lies the secret of its ultimate success.

The problem is that electrons are trapped, a bit like pieces on a draughts board in which no spaces are free. What makes silicon, and other semiconductors, special is that it is possible to promote one of the electrons to an empty board - the conduction band - where they can move freely. It's a bit like the 3-dimensional chess played by the point-eared Dr Spock in Star Trek.

Temperature is crucial. Warming a semiconductor, allow some electrons to leap, like salmon, up to the empty conduction band. And at the same time, the space left behind - known as a hole - can move too. But there is another way to make silicon conduct electricity: it seems perverse, but by deliberately introducing impurities like boron or phosphorus one can subtly change the electrical behaviour of silicon.

Such tricks lie at the heart of the functioning of the silicon chips that allow you to listen to this podcast. In less than 50 years silicon has gone from being an intriguing curiosity to being one of the fundamental elements in our lives. But the question remains, is silicon's importance simply restricted to the mineral world?