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Silicon exists in nature in many dioxide forms, making compounds with oxygen, phosphorus, magnesium, and others. About 97% of Earth's crust is made of rocks and comprises silicon and oxygen compounds. It occurs in combined form in nature as silicon dioxide which is commonly known as silica.
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Silicon is the second most abundant electropositive element which makes up 27.7% of the Earth's crust by mass. Silicon is, for the most part, unreactive. Silicon is a hard yet breakable crystalline solid, and it has a bluish-grey metallic lustre, and also Silicon is tetravalent, that is to say, its valency is 4, it is also a semiconductor. Electronic configuration of silicon is (Ne) 3s 2 3p 2. Silicon used in electronics acts as metals, while the glass which is a silicon compound has non-metallic qualities. Silicon is metallic, one of the seven elements which have both the characteristics of non-metal and metal depending upon the other element to which it combines. Carbon is above it, while the elements like germanium, tin, lead, and flerovium are below it. Silicon is a member of the carbon family and is a non-metallic chemical element, having atomic number 14, and belongs to group 14, period 3 in the p-block of the periodic table. The melting point is surpassed by only boron out of all the metalloids and nonmetals.
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Silicates, which contain silicon and oxygen, are formed by the oxides form of the silicon. And it was because of the fact that silicon has a high chemical affinity to oxygen. Silicon was not characterized in its pure form until the year 1824 when Jons Jakob Berzelius first managed to do so.
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