🔆Germanium: ✅It is a chemical element between silicon and tin in Group 14 (IVa) of the periodic table. It has the chemical symbol Ge and the atomic number 32. ✅It is a silvery-gray metalloid, intermediate in properties between the metals and the nonmetals. ✅It has a diamondlike crystalline structure, and it is similar in chemical and physical properties to silicon. ✅Germanium is stable in air and water and is unaffected by alkalis and acids, except nitric acid. ✅Although germanium was not discovered until 1886 by Clemens Winkler, a German chemist, its existence, properties, and position in the periodic system had been predicted in 1871 by the Russian chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev, who called the hypothetical element ekasilicon. ✅Germanium use in semiconductors. ✅It remains of primary importance in the manufacture of transistors and of components for devices such as rectifiers and photocells. #gs3