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Object

Germanium

A square, metallic object with a central hexagonal cutout and surrounding small, embedded gemstones is displayed against a black background.

Element 32, a brittle grey-white metalloid that was the workhorse semiconductor of the first decade of the transistor, before being displaced by silicon in the 1960s. It survives in modern electronics as a dopant in fibre optics, as silicon-germanium alloys in radio-frequency chips, and as the active material in some infrared lenses for thermal imaging.

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