Henry Edin St. Clair Deville and Friedrich Wöhler first reported the synthesis of silicon nitride in 1857. In the synthesis method they reported, a crucible containing silicon was buried in a crucible filled with carbon and heated to reduce the infiltration of oxygen. They reported a product they called silicon nitride, but they failed to figure out its chemical composition. In 1879, Paul Schuetzenberger mixed silicon with lining (a paste that can be used as a crucible lining, obtained by mixing charcoal, coal or coke with clay) and heated it in a blast furnace, and reported it as a compound with the composition of Si3N4. In 1910, Ludwig Weiss and Theodor Engelhardt heated silicon in pure nitrogen to obtain Si3N4. In 1925, Friederich and Sittig used carbothermal reduction to heat silicon dioxide and carbon to 1250-1300℃ in a nitrogen atmosphere to synthesize silicon nitride.
Silicon nitride was not taken seriously and studied for decades until commercial applications of silicon nitride emerged. From 1948 to 1952, Acheson's Diamond Company near Niagara Falls, New York, registered several patents for the manufacture and use of silicon nitride. In 1958, silicon nitride produced by Union Carbide was used to make thermocouple tubes, rocket nozzles, and crucibles for melting metals. Research on silicon nitride in the UK began in 1953 with the purpose of making high-temperature parts for gas turbines. This led to the development of bonded silicon nitride and hot-pressed silicon nitride. In 1971, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under the U.S. Department of Defense signed a $17 million contract with Ford and Westinghouse to develop two ceramic gas turbines.
Although the properties of silicon nitride have long been known, silicon nitride (about 2×5µm in size) that exists naturally on Earth was not discovered until the 1990s in meteorites. This type of silicon nitride ore found in nature is named "nierite" in honor of Alfred Otto Carl Nier, a pioneer in mass spectrometry research. However, there is evidence that this type of silicon nitride ore may have been found in meteorites in Azerbaijan, the former Soviet Union, earlier. Meteorites containing silicon nitride minerals have also been found in Guizhou Province, China. In addition to existing in meteorites on Earth, silicon nitride is also distributed in cosmic dust in outer space.
