High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Silanes are chemical compounds of silicon and hydrogen, which are analogues of alkane hydrocarbons. Silanes consist of a chain of silicon atoms covalently bonded to each other and to hydrogen atoms. The general formula of a silane is SinH2n+2. Much of the early work establishing that silicon does indeed form an homologous series of hydrides analogous to the alkanes, albeit to a much smaller extent, was conducted by Alfred Stock and Carl Somiesky. Although monosilane and disilane were already known, Stock and Somiesky discovered, beginning in 1916, the next four members of the SinH2n+2 series, up to n = 6, and they also documented the formation of solid phase polymeric silicon hydrides (vide infra).