Assignment 8

Assignment 8

1. My Semiconductor of the Week

My Semiconductor of the Week is Boron. It is a chemical element with atomic number 5 and the chemical symbol B. Boron is a trivalent nonmetallic element which occurs abundantly in the evaporite ores borax and ulexite. Boron is never found as a free element on Earth.

Elemental boron is used as a dopant in the semiconductor industry, while boron compounds play important roles as light structural materials, nontoxic insecticides and preservatives, and reagents for chemical synthesis.

Boron is an essential plant nutrient, although higher soil concentrations of boron may also be toxic to plants. As an ultratrace element, boron is necessary for the optimal health of rats and presumably other mammals, though its physiological role in animals is poorly understood.

Brown amorphous boron is a product of certain chemical reactions. It contains boron atoms randomly bonded to each other without long range order.
Chemically boron is electron-deficient. It is an electrophile. Compounds of boron often behave as Lewis acids, readily bonding with electron-rich substances to compensate for boron's electron deficiency. The reactions of boron are dominated by such requirement for electrons. Also, boron is the least electronegative non-metal, meaning that it is usually oxidized (loses electrons) in reactions.

Turkey and the United States are the world's largest producers of boron. Turkey has almost 72% of the world’s boron potential and boron reserves. Boron does not appear in nature in elemental form but is found combined in borax, boric acid, colemanite, kernite, ulexite and borates. Boric acid is sometimes found in volcanic spring waters. Ulexite is a borate mineral that naturally has properties of fiber optics.


Borax crystals

2. Chembalancer

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3. Balancing Equations

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