Hexasilane

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A chemical compound made of six silicon atoms bonded to hydrogen, belonging to the silane family of silicon hydrides
2. A silicon hydride whose molecule forms a chain of six silicon atoms, with hydrogen atoms completing the bonds
3. An inorganic silicon-hydrogen compound with six linked silicon atoms, related to silane and used in chemical research

Etymology: Hexasilane is a straightforward chemical coinage rather than a word with a folk story behind it. It is built from "hexa-", the Greek prefix for "six," and "silane," the name chemists give to the family of silicon-hydrogen compounds whose simplest member is SiH4. The pattern follows the older naming of alkanes, where "methane," "ethane," "propane" and the rest carry Greek numerical prefixes, and silanes were named by analogy with them. Hexasilane is therefore a chain of six silicon atoms bonded together, with hydrogen atoms filling the remaining valences, and the name says exactly that. Silanes as a class were investigated in the nineteenth century, when chemists began working with silicon hydrides, but the systematic names for the longer chains came with the growing study of catenated silicon compounds in the twentieth century. The "-ane" ending signals a saturated compound with only single bonds, the same logic that gives alkanes their names. Because the word is a technical label assembled from parts, its meaning can be read directly from its construction.