Worried about "Peak Silicon?" Never Fear--Liquid Silicon is Here!

Solar Electricity is just getting started, and many people fear that a shortage of silicon will slow the growth of the young but vital solar energy industry. Now we have word from scientists in Japan that all of these worries have been for nought.

.... a team led by Masahiro Furusawa of Japan's Seiko Epson Corporation, reporting on Thursday in the British weekly scientific journal Nature, say they have made a liquid form of silicon that is both easier and cheaper to make -- and can even be delivered by an inkjet printer.

Their basic substance is cyclopentasiline, a silicon-based polymer that comprises five silicon atoms joined in a ring and is liquid at room temperature.

Ultraviolet light is used to break open the bonds of some of the rings and let the molecules reform into long, placid chains that have the characteristics of viscous oil.

The mixture is then diluted with a solvent, and is so fluid that it can be coated onto a surface by spinning, or even sprayed by an inkjet printer.

The resultant liquid film is then baked at around 500 degrees Celsius (932 Fahrenheit) to turn it into a hard mosaic of flat silicon crystals whose semi-conductor qualities are as good as the ultrapure slabs made by conventional refining, according to the paper.

....[Fellow scientist Rosenberg] said the ability to make silicon film by inkjet was a clear breakthrough.

.... it will certainly allow ... remarkably straightforward generation of simple, cheap and flexible circuits for displays, as well as a range of other applications -- solar cells, X-ray detections and multi-analyte chemical sensor included."

Read the entire newsreport here.

In the current electronics climate, such developments may be the modern equivalent of turning lead into gold. Every time naysayers predict shortages, genuine scientists and engineers tend to come up with alternatives. That is the way things are going to be, unless religious fanatics and ideological doomseekers get their wish, and shut down western civilisation. My bet is that western civ will push through to the asymptote.