Question

Why silicon is preferred over germanium in most of semiconductor devices?

Answer 1

Silicon chip semiconductors having silicon crystal lattice have higher breakdown voltage of about 0.7 Volts.

However, Breakdown voltage of Germanium chips is 0.3 Volts.

So, silicon semi conductor is more efficient.

Also, due to smaller size of silicon atoms more dense packing of it can be done for more transistors to set into a smaller area.

Answer 2

The potential Barrier of Silicon is more compared to Germanium which makes Ge more conductive as compared to Si. But the present trend is to use Silicon instead of Germanium in many devices like SMPS etc. ... The structure of Germanium crystals will be destroyed at higher temperature.