Silane
chemical compound
Silane (silicane) is an inorganic compound with chemical formula SiH4. It is a colorless, pyrophoric gas with a sharp, repulsive, pungent smell, somewhat similar to that of acetic acid. Silane is of practical interest as a precursor to elemental silicon. Silanes with alkyl groups are effective water repellents for mineral surfaces such as concrete and masonry. Silanes with both organic and inorganic attachments are used as coupling agents. They are commonly used to apply coatings to surfaces or as an adhesion promoter.
Production
Commercial-scale routes
Silane can be produced by several routes. Typically, it arises from the reaction of hydrogen chloride with magnesium silicide:
Mg2Si + 4 HCl → 2 MgCl2 + SiH4
It is also prepared from metallurgical-grade silicon in a two-step process. First, silicon is treated with hydrogen chloride at about 300 °C to produce trichlorosilane, HSiCl3, along with hydrogen gas, according to the chemical equation
Si + 3 HCl → HSiCl3 + H2
The trichlorosilane is then converted to a mixture of silane and silicon tetrachloride:
4 HSiCl3 → SiH4 + 3 SiCl4
This redistribution reaction requires a catalyst.
The most commonly used catalysts for this process are metal halides, particularly aluminium chloride.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Silane” as chemical compound. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as chemical compound. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q410572. The Library of Congress control number is sh90001654. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Silane” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.