The combined results from an international research project involving 40 interdisciplinary groups, providing the latest knowledge from the past few years. Adopting an application-oriented approach, this handy reference is a must-have for every silicon chemist, whether working in inorganic, organic, physical or polymer chemistry, materials science or physics.

Pergamon Texts in Organic Chemistry, Volume 9: The Chemistry of Silicon presents information essential in understanding the chemical properties of silicon. The book first covers the fundamental aspects of silicon, such as its nuclear, physical, and chemical properties. The text also details the history of silicon, its occurrence and distribution, and applications. Next, the selection enumerates the compounds and complexes of silicon, along with organosilicon compounds. The text will be of great interest to chemists and chemical engineers. Other researchers working on research study involving silicon will also benefit from the book.

The chemistry of silicon has always been a field of major concern due to its proximity to carbon on the periodic table. From the molecular chemist’s viewpoint, one of the most interesting differences between carbon and silicon is their divergent coordination behavior. In fact, silicon is prone to form hyper-coordinate organosilicon complexes, and, as conveyed by reports in the literature, highly sophisticated ligand systems are required to furnish low-coordinate organosilicon complexes. Tremendous progress in experimental, as well as computational, techniques has granted synthetic access to a broad range of coordination numbers for silicon, and the scientific endeavor, which was ongoing for decades, was rewarded with landmark discoveries in the field of organosilicon chemistry. Molecular congeners of silicon(0), as well as silicon oxides, were unveiled, and the prominent group 14 metalloid proved its applicability in homogenous catalysis as a supportive ligand or even as a center of catalytic activity. This book focuses on the most recent advances in the coordination chemistry of silicon with transition metals as well as main group elements, including the stabilization of low-valent silicon species through the coordination of electron donor ligands. Therefore, this book is associated with the development of novel synthetic methodologies, structural elucidations, bonding analysis, and also possible applications in catalysis or chemical transformations using related organosilicon compounds.

It may be argued that silicon, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and iron are among the most important elements on our planet, because of their involvement in geological, biol- ical, and technological processes and phenomena. All of these elements have been studied exhaustively, and voluminous material is available on their properties. Included in this material are numerous accounts of their electrochemical properties, ranging from reviews to extensive monographs to encyclopedic discourses. This is certainly true for C, H, O, and Fe, but it is true to a much lesser extent for Si, except for the specific topic of semiconductor electrochemistry. Indeed, given the importance of the elect- chemical processing of silicon and the use of silicon in electrochemical devices (e. g. , sensors and photoelectrochemical cells), the lack of a comprehensive account of the electrochemistry of silicon in aqueous solution at the fundamental level is surprising and somewhat troubling. It is troubling in the sense that the non-photoelectrochemistry of silicon seems “to have fallen through the cracks,” with the result that some of the electrochemical properties of this element are not as well known as might be warranted by its importance in a modern technological society. Dr. Zhang’s book, Electrochemical Properties of Silicon and Its Oxide, will go a long way toward addressing this shortcoming. As with his earlier book on the elect- chemistry of zinc, the present book provides a comprehensive account of the elect- chemistry of silicon in aqueous solution.

Silicon and silicon compounds have contributed decisively to the technical progress. Technical applications range from mass commodities to highly sophisticated special materials, from ceramics to polymers, from medicine to microelectronics. To keep pace with scientific and technical developments Germany and Austria have established national priority programs, strongly linked to each other as well as to some Swiss groups. At mid-term of the German program and the end of the first funding period of the Austrian program the results are summarized in this special edition of the journal Monatshefte für Chemie/Chemical Monthly, giving an excellent overview of the current chemical (and partly physical) acitivites in the joint Austrian/German/Swiss program. The contributions cover topical and interdisciplinary developments in the following areas: • new phenomena in compounds with Si-Si bonds: transitions between molecular compounds and solids, cyclosilanes, polysilanes, silicides, amorphous hydrogenated silicon, • novel silicon-oxygen systems: functionalized sol-gel compounds, spherosiloxanes, siloxene, • compounds with low- and high-coordinated silicon, • new spectroscopic and analytical techniques for the characterization of molecular and polymeric silicon compounds.

The first international symposium on the subject "The Physics and Chemistry of Si02 and the Si-Si02 Interface," organized in association with the Electrochemical Society, Inc. , was held in Atlanta, Georgia on May 15- 20, 1988. This symposium contained sixty papers and was so successful that the sponsoring divisions decided to schedule it on a regular basis every four years. Thus, the second symposium on "The Physics and Chemistry of Si02 and the Si02 Interface was held May 18-21, 1992 in St. Louis, Missouri, again sponsored by the Electronics and Dielectrics Science and Technology Divisions of The Electrochemical Society. This volume contains manuscripts of most of the fifty nine papers presented at the 1992 symposium, and is divided into eight chapters - approximating the organization of the symposium. Each chapter is preceded with an introduction by the session organizers. It is appropriate to provide a general assessment of the current status and understanding of the physics and chemistry of Si02 and the Si02 interface before proceeding with a brief overview of the individual chapters. Semiconductor devices have continued to scale down in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. This has resulted in thinner gate and field oxides as well as much closer spacing of individual device features. As a result, surface condition, native oxide composition, and cleaning and impurity effects now provide a much more significant contribution to the properties of oxides and their interfaces.

A comprehensive, up-to-date reference to synthetic applications of organosilicon chemistry Organic, organometallic, and polymer chemistry as well as materials science all utilize silicon in various forms, yet there is little cross-fertilization of ideas and applications among the disciplines. This book presents a much-needed overview of silicon chemistry, allowing fundamental and applied scientists to take full advantage of progress made within and outside their primary fields of expertise. With an emphasis on the preparation and reactivity of silicon compounds in organic, organometallic, and polymer chemistry, the author examines a broad range of useful topics-from mechanisms to syntheses of and syntheses using different organofunctional silanes. Numerous schemes as well as up-to-date examples from academia and industry will help readers to solve current synthetic problems and explore ideas for future research. Clear, concise coverage includes: * The mechanistic basis for the development of new silicon-based reactions * Formation and cleavage of silane reagents and functional siliconheteroatom compounds * Silicones, silica, polysilanes, and other silicon-containing polymers * Properties of molecules containing silicon, including bioactivity * Methods for the preparation of Si-C compounds * Silicon in organic synthesis * An extensive functional group index for easy access to functional group transformations