Silicon Monoxide Formula
silicon monoxide formula, also known as silica, is one of the most abundant elements in nature. It’s found in water, plants, animals and is the principal component of sand. Silica is present in the human body and plays a role in many of our bodily functions, as well. It’s a good insulator for heat and electricity and has excellent hardness, abrasion resistance and chemical stability. It’s used in a wide variety of optical coating applications, especially to protect front surface mirrors from mechanical abrasion and chemical corrosion.
Amorphous films of silicon monoxide exhibit a broad spectrum of optical properties which depend upon the oxidation state of the film. A pure amorphous film has strong characteristic absorption at a wavelength of 10 microns, while films with higher oxidation states absorb little or no light at this wavelength. By carefully varying the evaporation rate or oxygen pressure, films with properties somewhere between these two extremes can be produced.
In addition, amorphous silicon monoxide is characterized by the presence of suboxide-type tetrahedra, which can be observed by angstrom-beam electron diffraction at the interface between amorphous silicon and SiO2. These crystal structures are believed to stabilize the random networks of amorphous silicon and silicon dioxide in the interface regions.
The detailed optical and electrical properties of silicon monoxide films are highly dependent on the vaporization conditions of the source material and the residual atmosphere in the vacuum chamber, but with reasonable care, reproducible, hard, durable, abrasion resistant and pinhole free silicon monoxide can be deposited. It is one of the few simple metal oxides which can be produced on a commercial basis in vacuum systems capable of generating only modest pressures (2x10-6 torr or better) on a reproducible basis.
