Silicates are a group of minerals made up of silicon, oxygen, and other elements like aluminum, magnesium, or calcium. They are the most common minerals found on Earth and are a big part of rocks, sand, and soil. Silicates are essential because they make up about 90% of the Earth’s crust.
The basic building block of silicates is the silicon-oxygen tetrahedron. This structure looks like a pyramid with four oxygen atoms around one silicon atom. Depending on how these tetrahedra are arranged and bonded, silicates can form different types of structures, such as:
Silicates are used in construction (cement, bricks, glass), jewelry (gemstones), and even in electronics.
Silicon carbide is a compound made of silicon and carbon. It is also known as carborundum. Silicon carbide is not a natural mineral but is made in factories by heating silicon and carbon at very high temperatures.
These properties make it useful for various applications, such as:
Silicate minerals are the most frequent since silicon and oxygen are the most plentiful elements. Because silicate minerals make up the majority of crustal rocks, geologists and mineralogists pay close attention to them. With oxygen and silicon accounting for around 85 percent of the atoms in the Earth’s crust, most minerals in the crust contain these two elements and comprise the silicate class of minerals.
Almost all silicates have structures that are based on the [SiO4]-4 tetrahedron. Each oxygen atom in a [SiO4]–4 tetrahedra has only half of its -2 charge fulfilled by the Si-O bond (bond strength = 1) and must therefore be connected to additional cations.
When oxygen is bound to two Si atoms, the coordination polyhedra of oxygens around those two Si atoms share corners, and the oxygen in common has its charge totally balanced by the two Si-O bonds. Because [SiO4]-4 tetrahedra can share corners and perfectly balance oxygen charges locally, a wide range of silicate configurations are feasible.
Silicates are classified into three types: (i) orthosilicates, (ii) pyrosilicates, and (iii) cyclic silicates.
Silicon carbide is a substance that ranges from black to green in colour and is composed of 70% silicon and 30% carbon. Silicon carbide is a significant non-oxide ceramic with several industrial uses. It possesses unique qualities such as high hardness and strength, chemical and thermal stability, high melting point, oxidation resistance, strong erosion resistance, and so on.
Only a limited quantity exists in nature, where coal and sand have been exposed to each other in the presence of high heat. Because there are no economically viable reserves, the material is made for practical application.
All of these characteristics combine to make silicon carbide an ideal material for high-power, high-temperature electrical devices, as well as abrasion and cutting applications. Since Acheson’s inception of the manufacturing method in 1892, there has been a significant amount of study documented on silicon carbide synthesis.
It has fascinating electrical properties due to its semiconductor features, with resistance ranging by as much as seven orders of magnitude between various compositions. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and detectors are examples of electrical equipment that use this material.