Scientists get a strange new form of silicon

Our time is sometimes jokingly called the "Silicon Age", because this element is used in almost every electronic device that forms our modern world.

Therefore, it is not surprising that scientists around the world are actively working with silicon in order to obtain new, previously unknown combinations and thus improve the properties of modern electronic devices.

So a scientific group led by the Carnegie Institute of Science has obtained a new way to create a form of silicon with a unique hexagonal structure.

Carbon and its new forms

As you know, elements are able to take on a variety of crystalline forms, which scientists call allotropes. And depending on the arrangement of atoms, they (structures) can have completely different properties.

For example, carbon can exist in two-dimensional whists in the so-called form of graphene, a stack of such sheets is already graphite, while diamond has a cubic form, etc.

So the most commonly used form of silicon has the same structure as diamond. But scientists understand that potentially other forms can have useful electronic properties and therefore conduct numerous experiments.

In 2014, engineers at Carnegie obtained a new silicon allotrope called Si24, made from sheets of silicon arranged in rings of five, six, and eight atoms.

In this case, the gaps formed in the center of such rings were able to form one-dimensional channels for the advancement of other atoms.

In a new study conducted, scientists have created a method for converting Si24 into another completely new allotrope.

The scientists heated the Si24 crystals, and this caused the thin sheets to align in four repeating layers. This gave the name to the resulting structure - 4H-silicon.

Scientists said that this is the first time that they managed to create stable bulk crystals of this kind of material.

Where can this new structure be applied?

So far, even scientists do not fully understand where exactly this new structure can be applied in practice, but scientists suggest that their work in the future will allow the improvement of components such as transistors or photovoltaic energy systems.

Scientists shared the results of the work done on the pages of the journal Physical Review Letters.

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