# Is anything else on earth ever more pure than semiconductor grade silicon ?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anything-else-on-earth-ever-more-pure-than-semiconductor-grade-silicon/691786>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 27, 2014, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anything-else-on-earth-ever-more-pure-than-semiconductor-grade-silicon/691786 "2014-06-27T15:53:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2014, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anything-else-on-earth-ever-more-pure-than-semiconductor-grade-silicon/691786/21 "2014-06-28T01:04:42Z")

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germanium is used in semiconductors too.

> **[Germanium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanium)**
>
> 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 complexes with oxygen in nature.
> Because it seldom appears in high concentration, germanium was found comparatively late in the discovery of the elements. Ge...

paste screwed up the quote. thats 10 raised to the power of 10.

> [@](#):
>
> Germanium is a semiconductor. Zone refining techniques have led to the production of crystalline germanium for semiconductors that has an impurity of only one part in 1010,[27] making it one of the purest materials ever obtained.

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**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2014, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anything-else-on-earth-ever-more-pure-than-semiconductor-grade-silicon/691786/22 "2014-06-28T05:51:29Z")

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Well, technically pure water is just H2O. I imagine there must be some way to make it 99.99999999999999999% pure.

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**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2014, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anything-else-on-earth-ever-more-pure-than-semiconductor-grade-silicon/691786/23 "2014-06-28T07:09:10Z")

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So when we talk about 99.999999% purity, are we talking about by mass or by number of atoms?

If it’s just by number of particles, there’s a hell of a lot of neutrinos “inside” any given material at any given moment in time.

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2014, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anything-else-on-earth-ever-more-pure-than-semiconductor-grade-silicon/691786/24 "2014-06-28T07:33:00Z")

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> [@Velocity](#):
>
> Well, technically pure water is just H2O. I imagine there must be some way to make it 99.99999999999999999% pure.

The problem is that before you get to that degree of purity, water is dissolving bits of the container (or bits are diffusing at the boundary) - even if it’s something we conventionally consider insoluble, like metal or glass.

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2014, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anything-else-on-earth-ever-more-pure-than-semiconductor-grade-silicon/691786/25 "2014-06-28T07:34:09Z")

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> [@drewtwo99](#):
>
> So when we talk about 99.999999% purity, are we talking about by mass or by number of atoms?

Molar seems the way to go on this, I reckon.

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