Silicate minerals are rock-forming minerals made up of silicate groups. They are the largest and most important class of minerals and make up approximately 90 percent of Earth's crust. In mineralogy, silica (silicon dioxide, ) is usually considered a silicate mineral. Silica is found in nature as the mineral quartz, and its polymorphs. On Earth, a wide variety of silicate minerals occur in an even wider range of combinations as a result of the processes that have been forming and re-working the crust for billions of years. These processes include partial melting, crystallization, fractionation, metamorphism, weathering, and diagenesis. Living organisms also contribute to this geologic cycle. For example, a type of plankton known as diatoms construct their exoskeletons ("frustules") from silica extracted from seawater. The frustules of dead diatoms are a major constituent of deep ocean sediment, and of diatomaceous earth. General structure A silicate mineral is generally an inorganic compound consisting of subunits with the formula [SiO2+n]2n-. Although depicted as such, the description of silicates as anions is a simplification. Balancing the charges of the silicate anions are metal cations, Mx+. Typical cations are Mg2+, Fe2+, and Na+. The Si-O-M linkage between the silicates and the metals are strong, polar-covalent bonds. Silicate anions ([SiO2+n]2n-) are invariably colorless, or when crushed to a fine powder, white. The colors of silicate minerals arise from the metal component, commonly iron. In most silicate minerals, silicon is tetrahedral, being surrounded by four oxides. The coordination number of the oxides is variable except when it bridges two silicon centers, in which case the oxide has a coordination number of two. Some silicon centers may be replaced by atoms of other elements, still bound to the four corner oxygen corners. If the substituted atom is not normally tetravalent, it usually contributes extra charge to the anion, which then requires extra cations. For example, in the mineral orthoclase , the anion is a tridimensional network of tetrahedra in which all oxygen corners are shared. If all tetrahedra had silicon centers, the anion would be just neutral silica . Replacement of one in every four silicon atoms by an aluminum atom results in the anion , whose charge is neutralized by the potassium cations . Main groups In mineralogy, silicate minerals are classified into seven major groups according to the structure of their silicate anion: Note that tectosilicates can only have additional cations if some of the