Marsalis to receive honorary degree alongside Mary Ann Moran ’77, Mark Siegel ’73, Joe Castiglione ’68, and IIya Kaminsky An icon of the jazz world with more than 110 recordings to his name, Wynton Marsalis will provide remarks at Colgate University’s 2023 commencement on Sunday, May 21.
Using a technique they developed in 2008, the
University of Georgia
team succeeded in isolating silicon oxide fragments for the first time, at room temperature, by trapping them between stabilizing organic bases. Silicon monoxide is the most abundant silicon oxide in the universe but, terrestrially it is only persistent at high temperatures, about 1,200 degrees Celsius. Naturally abundant silica ((SiO2)n) exists on Earth as sand; a network solid wherein each silicon atom bonds to four oxygen atoms in a process that repeats infinitely.
A new paper reports two new compounds containing Si2O3 and Si2O4 cores that the team was able to isolate using the carbene stabilization technique. This synthetic strategy allowed the team to tame the highly reactive silicon oxide moieties at room temperature, a discovery which breaks open an area of chemistry where difficulty with synthetics has limited the research activity. Silicon-oxide materials are found in every electronic device and c