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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]
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.
Recognition status, as metalloids, of some elements in the p-block of the periodic table. Percentages are median appearance frequencies in the lists of metalloids. [n 2] The staircase-shaped line is a typical example of the arbitrary metal–nonmetal dividing line found on some periodic tables.
Nonmetals show more variability in their properties than do metals. [1] Metalloids are included here since they behave predominately as chemically weak nonmetals.. Physically, they nearly all exist as diatomic or monatomic gases, or polyatomic solids having more substantial (open-packed) forms and relatively small atomic radii, unlike metals, which are nearly all solid and close-packed, and ...
The metallic elements in the periodic table located between the transition metals to their left and the chemically weak nonmetallic metalloids to their right have received many names in the literature, such as post-transition metals, poor metals, other metals, p-block metals, basic metals, and chemically weak metals.
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 complexes with oxygen in nature. Because it seldom appears in high concentration, germanium was found comparatively late in the discovery of the elements.
Boron, being a metalloid, is a thermal and electrical insulator at room temperature, but a good conductor of heat and electricity at high temperatures. [8] Unlike boron, the metals in the group are good conductors under normal conditions.
The origin and usage of the term metalloid is convoluted. Its origin lies in attempts, dating from antiquity, to describe metals and to distinguish between typical and less typical forms. It was first applied to metals that floated on water ( lithium , sodium and potassium ), and then more popularly to nonmetals .