Not every element that we use on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope
Sometimes we use thigs that are tried and true
and very abundant.
Silicon it works!
We don’t find silicon like this on Earth, it's pure form.
It's usually paired with oxygen as a silicate and silicates make up 90%
of the Earth's crust!
Between 2010 and 2018, people purified
7.37 million metric tons of silicon.
2018's global revenue was $11.4 billion
US dollars. What makes this element so special
that the epicenter of the tech world is named after it?
Let's head over to the shop to see why silicon works so well for this mission.
So yeah silicon is cheap and available, but the reason
we want to use it is because it happens to be a semi-conductor.
Now a semiconductor is something that doesn’t conduct too well,
like this metal object, or insulate things like wood would do.
We want it to be able to do both, with a little coaxing of electricity.
Mega coaxing
A photo detector looks a lot like this, and its on a silicon wafer.
And we use it because it has a stable atomic structure.
When light passes on the silicon lets out a few electrons. That is the electrical voltage,
which then translates into data
for the scientists. Silicon isn't the only semiconductor
or even the best semiconductor. But its ability to switch
between giving an electrical signal or not, meaning a 1 or a 0
makes it worth it.
music