eli5: What exactly is silicone and why is it so essential to making electronics ?
In: 45
Silicon the element used in electronics is basically sand.
You take lots of sand melt it and purify it Until you have pure silicon, which is naturally organised in a neat crystalline form.
This alone can not really make electronics, but you can add other elements into the silicon layers, to either create a Electron surplus, or deficit.
By combining those different layers you can create a transistor, which is basically a switch that can decide if electricity is flowing, if the switch is pressed (by electric input)
Now you combine billions of those and you can make CPUs, and all those mind for electronics.
Tldr, it’s cheap, it can easily be manipulated for different electric states
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