This is missing one of the most important reasons though: Silicon Oxide.
Silicon Oxide is almost perfectly lattice matched to silicon, but completely insulating. Which means it's incredibly easy to grow features onto polished silicon wafers because the oxidation product of the material is exactly what you need in order to build up insulating features - i.e. MOSFET junctions, capacitors and conductive paths.
Silicon Oxide is almost perfectly lattice matched to silicon, but completely insulating. Which means it's incredibly easy to grow features onto polished silicon wafers because the oxidation product of the material is exactly what you need in order to build up insulating features - i.e. MOSFET junctions, capacitors and conductive paths.