I’ve got a chunk of actual silicon hiding around here somewhere. It’s from a busted cylinder for slicing chip wafers from. I never found a geologist or other scientist type that could figure out what it is when I handed it to them LOL (it’s silver, and like a weird metal that fractures like glass.
Sounds like you have a chunk of ingot from a “pig” of silicon as grown by Intel. Totally useless until you send it to a Japanese guy to cut it into wafers.
I’m not sure how big or what shape they “grow” them now but when they were getting started, in the 60’s, the pigs were about 6” in diameter and they grew them to about a foot long——pure silicon.
And, oh, yeah, your basic geologist guy would not recognize it. Strange sight for rockhounds also. I expect things have wobbled around but it used to take five countries to make a usable silicon chip. Intel grew ‘em. Japan sliced them. The Souks parted and sized them. Taiwan etched them. then Japan and china assembled them into an actual chip. Just the air travel alone made them valuable.