Antimony Antimony Antimony is a chemical element with symbol Sb (from ) and atomic number 51. A lustrous gray metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (SbS). Antimony compounds have been known since ancient times and were powdered for use as medicine and cosmetics, often known by the Arabic name, kohl. Metallic antimony was also known, but it was erroneously identified as lead upon its discovery. The earliest known description of the metal in the West was written in 1540 by Vannoccio Biringuccio. For some time, China has been the largest producer of antimony and its
Germanium-tin Germanium-tin Germanium-tin is an alloy of the elements germanium and tin, both located in group 14 of the periodic table. It is only thermodynamically stable under a small composition range. Despite this limitation, it has useful properties for band gap and strain engineering of silicon integrated optoelectronic and microelectronic semiconductor devices. Germanium-tin alloys must be kinetically stabilized in order to prevent decomposition. Therefore, low temperature molecular beam epitaxy or chemical vapor deposition techniques are typically used for their synthesis. Germanium-tin alloys have higher carrier mobilities than either silicon or germanium. Therefore it has been proposed that they can be used