All articles A–Z

Silicon dendritic web and ribbon growth

Silicon dendritic web and ribbon growth are crystal growth methods that pull a thin self-supporting silicon sheet directly from the melt, chiefly to make solar cell wafers without sawing.

Silicon dioxide

Silicon dioxide (SiO2), also called silica, is a compound of silicon and oxygen occurring naturally as quartz and serving as the raw material for glass, ceramics, and foundry casting.

Silicon donor qubits

Silicon donor qubits are quantum bits encoded in the electron and nuclear spins of phosphorus impurity atoms in isotopically purified silicon-28, with record coherence times.

Silicon Graphics (SGI) was an American computer company founded in 1982 by James Clark that built high-performance workstations and servers for 3D graphics, used for Hollywood visual effects, and created OpenGL.

Silicon heterojunction solar cell

A silicon heterojunction (SHJ), or HJT, solar cell is a crystalline-silicon cell whose junctions are thin amorphous-silicon films; Kaneka's 26.7% IBC cell set a record certified in 2017.

Silicon ingot

A silicon ingot is a bulk mass of solid silicon, grown as a single crystal or multicrystalline block, that is sliced into wafers for chips and solar cells.

Silicon Integrated Systems

Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS; 矽统科技) is a Taiwanese chip designer founded in 1987 in Hsinchu, known for PC core-logic chipsets and now touch and battery-management ICs.

Silicon interposer

A silicon interposer is a piece of silicon in a 2.5D chip package that provides high-density electrical connections between dies, such as logic chiplets and HBM memory.

Silicon Labs

Silicon Labs is an Austin, Texas semiconductor company founded in 1996 that designs wireless chips and microcontrollers for the Internet of Things; Texas Instruments agreed to acquire it for $7.5 billion in 2026.

Silicon Mobility (Guigu Shumo / ANX Semiconductor)

Silicon Mobility, also known as 硅谷数模 (Guigu Shumo) and formerly Analogix Semiconductor, is a Suzhou-based fabless semiconductor company designing display TCON and high-speed connectivity chips.

Silicon monoxide composite anode

A silicon monoxide composite anode is a lithium-ion battery negative electrode made of silicon monoxide (SiO) blended with graphite and carbon, storing more lithium than graphite.

Silicon MOS spin qubit

A silicon MOS spin qubit is a quantum bit formed by the spin of a single electron at a silicon/silicon dioxide interface, fabricated with standard CMOS foundry techniques.

Sep 19, 2026

Silicon Motion Technology

Silicon Motion Technology (慧荣科技) is a fabless designer of NAND flash controller chips for solid-state drives and embedded storage, founded in 1995 in San Jose, California, and Nasdaq-listed since 2005.

Silicon nanowire anode

A silicon nanowire anode is a lithium-ion battery negative electrode made of silicon wires, offering about ten times graphite's capacity while managing silicon's large volume change during charging.

Silicon nitride

Silicon nitride (Si3N4), or trisilicon tetranitride, is a strong, heat- and wear-resistant synthetic non-oxide ceramic, first synthesized in 1859, used in bearings, cutting tools, engine parts, and implants.

Silicon nitride photonics

Silicon nitride photonics is an integrated-photonics technology that guides light in low-loss silicon nitride waveguides, known for chip-scale frequency combs, visible-light biosensing, and hybridly integrated narrow-linewidth lasers.

Silicon on insulator

Silicon on insulator (SOI) is a semiconductor wafer technology placing a thin silicon device layer on a buried oxide insulator, improving speed, power, and radiation tolerance.

Silicon oxynitride

Silicon oxynitride (SiON) is an amorphous material of silicon, oxygen, and nitrogen whose composition and refractive index are tunable between silicon dioxide and silicon nitride, making it useful for gate dielectrics and on-chip waveguides.

Silicon photoanodes

Silicon photoanodes are n-type silicon photoelectrodes that use sunlight to oxidize water in photoelectrochemical water splitting. Bare silicon corrodes rapidly, so practical devices rely on protective layers such as TiO2.

Silicon photomultiplier

The silicon photomultiplier (SiPM), also called a multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC), is a solid-state photodetector that senses single photons, used in PET scanners, LIDAR, and astrophysics.

Silicon photonic modulator

A silicon photonic modulator is a chip-scale device that uses an electrical signal to encode data onto light in a silicon waveguide, mainly through free-carrier plasma dispersion.

Silicon photonic quantum key distribution

Silicon photonic quantum key distribution is the implementation of QKD, exchanging secret keys using quantum states of light, on silicon photonic chips compatible with CMOS microelectronics.

Silicon photonics

Silicon photonics is the technology of building photonic integrated circuits on silicon with CMOS fabs, widely used in data-center transceivers despite needing external III-V light sources.

Silicon photonics transceiver

A silicon photonics transceiver is an optical module that converts electrical signals to light and back, built on a silicon chip and used in data centers.

Silicon pixel detector

A silicon pixel detector is a particle detector made of a two-dimensional array of small silicon elements that records individual charged particles and locates decay vertices near the collision point.

Silicon quantum computing

Silicon quantum computing is an approach that encodes qubits in electron or nuclear spins confined in silicon, in quantum dots, donor atoms, or defects, leveraging CMOS chip fabrication.

Silicon quantum dot

A silicon quantum dot is a nanoscale silicon structure that confines electrons so their energy levels become discrete, used for light emission, photocatalysis, and hosting electron spin qubits.

Silicon quantum dot qubit

A silicon quantum dot qubit encodes quantum information in the spin of a single electron confined in a 100 nm silicon dot, pursued for long coherence times and CMOS-compatible manufacturing.

Silicon Ranch Corp

Silicon Ranch Corp is a Nashville-based solar energy company founded in 2011 by former Tennessee officials, operating more than 180 solar farms across the United States and Canada.