Methylsilazane

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A chemical compound containing methyl and silazane groups commonly used in the synthesis of silicon-based materials
2. An organosilicon compound combining methyl groups with silazane structures applied in material science
3. A molecule featuring methyl and silazane functional groups often utilized in preparing silicon-related substances

Etymology: Methylsilazane is a chemical coinage built from parts that were each named at different times. "Silicon" comes from New Latin "silicium," a name coined in the early nineteenth century by Thomas Thomson, Humphry Davy and others for the element first isolated by Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1823, based on Latin "silex" (flint). The "-ane" ending marks a saturated hydrocarbon-type parent compound, and "-azane" is the systematic name for the nitrogen-hydrogen parent, ammonia-like "azane" (NH3), built from "aza-" (nitrogen, from Greek "a-" "not" plus "zoe" "life," a reference to nitrogen's inability to support combustion or breathing, coined by Antoine Lavoisier in the 1780s). Putting these together, a silazane is a compound in which silicon and nitrogen atoms alternate in a chain or ring, and "methyl" (from French "méthyle," coined by Jean-Baptiste Dumas and Eugène Péligot in the 1830s, from Greek "methy," wine, and "hyle," wood) names the one-carbon group attached to the silicon. The word is therefore a systematic name rather than an old term, and its meaning can be read directly from its pieces.

Synonyms: silazane