Why silicon is used in memory chip?

Answer 1

silicon is the insulator. Just like rubber or platic coated electrical wires or cords are insulated.

Silicon is used for 3 very good reasons.

#1. It can be made so be so absolutely thin, it can be applied in layers in micro circuitry

#2. It can made as a liquid that solidifies, making it possible to create "printed circuit boards" Which are in essence layers of gold wire and silicon in a computer designed labyrinth that provide better speed, and uses less space.

#3. THERES LOTS OF IT AND IT'S CHEAP!

Silicon is a crystalline semiconductor, not an insulator. By adding impurities called dopants it can be made resistive, conductive, or into active devices like transistors. By oxidizing or nitriding it it can be made into an insulator.

In making modern chips, a large doped crystal of silicon about 4 feet long and a foot in diameter is grown, then sliced with diamond saws into 1 foot diameter 0.5 mm thick wafers. Using a process of photolithography areas are marked off for changing doping, insulating, or metallizing. As many as 3 dozen photolithographic steps may be needed to produce a circuit. The chips are then tested on the wafer then the wafer is "diced" with diamond saws. The good dice are then packaged and retested.

The main reason silicon is used is it is the most well behaved semiconductor and has insulating solid oxides. Germanium starts going into runaway conduction at too low a temperature and its oxides are conductive. Carbon has better high temperature characteristics than silicon, but its oxides are gasses. Binary semiconductors are often expensive or toxic to process (e.g. Gallium Arsenide).

Humans still design all integrated circuits, although they are now aided by computer software that can handle the boring place & route steps

Answer 2

silicon os used for making computer chip because it semiconducter