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Germanium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid (more rarely considered a metal) in the carbon group that is chemically similar to its group neighbors silicon and tin. Like silicon, germanium naturally reacts and forms ...
A metalloid is a chemical element which has a preponderance of properties in between, or that are a mixture of, those of metals and nonmetals. The word metalloid comes from the Latin metallum ("metal") and the Greek oeides ("resembling in form or appearance"). [1] There is no standard definition of a metalloid and no complete agreement on which ...
The elements commonly classified as metalloids are boron, silicon, germanium, arsenic, antimony and tellurium. [n 4] The status of polonium and astatine is not settled. Most authors recognise one or the other, or both, as metalloids; Herman, Hoffmann and Ashcroft, on the basis of relativistic modelling, predict astatine will be a monatomic metal.
Germanium is usually considered to be a metalloid rather than a metal. [124] Like carbon (as diamond) and silicon, it has a covalent tetrahedral crystalline structure (BCN 4). [125] Compounds in its preferred oxidation state of +4 are covalent. [126] Germanium forms an amphoteric oxide, GeO 2 [127] and anionic germanates, such as Mg 2 GeO 4.
Silicon and germanium, both metalloids, each can form +4 ions. Tin and lead both are metals , while flerovium is a synthetic, radioactive (its half life is very short, only 1.9 seconds) element that may have a few noble gas -like properties, though it is still most likely a post-transition metal.
The chemical elements can be broadly divided into metals, metalloids, and nonmetals according to their shared physical and chemical properties. All elemental metals have a shiny appearance (at least when freshly polished); are good conductors of heat and electricity; form alloys with other metallic elements; and have at least one basic oxide.
This line has been called the amphoteric line, [2] the metal-nonmetal line, [3] the metalloid line, [4] [5] the semimetal line, [6] or the staircase. [2] [n 1] While it has also been called the Zintl border [8] or the Zintl line [9] [10] these terms instead refer to a vertical line sometimes drawn between groups 13 and 14.
As a metalloid the chemistry of silicon is largely covalent in nature, noting it can form alloys with metals such as iron and copper. The common oxide of silicon (SiO 2) is weakly acidic. Germanium. Germanium is a shiny, mostly unreactive grey-white solid with a density of 5.323 g/cm 3 (about two-thirds that of iron), and is hard (MH 6.0) and ...