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by rcxdude 615 days ago
>Normalizing for density, monocrystalline silicon is stronger than steel!

So's glass, and silicon's a lot like glass (very brittle)

1 comments

Glass has a tensile strength more than an order of magnitude below mono-Si. The elastic modulus for soda-lime is within a factor of 2, but that's not usually what is meant by "strength", rather "stiffness".

You're right that fracture toughness is comparable, but that's not usually as relevant in a MEMS context: for one thing there's less potential for unanticipated collisions, but also crack propagation is significantly inhibited at microscopic length scales.