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Study of the Preparation of High Purity Silicon by a New Electro-thermal Metallurgy Method

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Abstract

A new electro-thermal metallurgy method to prepare high purity silicon (ASTM A 922) was developed in this paper. CaO-SiO2 were added into raw materials as slagging agents during the smelting process in order to improve the purity of the silicon products. This method combined the smelting process with the slag refining process into one step. It not only simplified the technological process, but also decreased the production cost of SoG-Si significantly. In this study, the distribution of impurity elements in different areas of the crucible was studied and the mechanism of impurity elements removed by the slag phase was also investigated. Phosphorus (P) in liquid Si could diffuse into the slag/Si interface and react with SiO2 which was derived from the melted slag phase. Then the reaction product P2O5 would diffuse into the melted slag phase from slag/Si interface and react with CaO to form the stable compound 3CaO ·P2O5. Compared to the result without adding slagging agents, the concentration of elements Fe, Al, P and S was reduced by 90.71%, 63.90%, 44.52% and 56.93% with this new method. The purity of silicon product can reach up to 99.6%. The results indicate that adding slagging agent into the raw materials during the smelting process is beneficial to remove impurity elements and improve the purity of the silicon product.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the State Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.51334004), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.51074043).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Metallurgy, Northeastern University, Shenyang, 110000, People’s Republic of China

    Kaikai Ye, Jingqiang Wang, Pengfei Xing, Xinghong Du, Bo Gao & Jian Kong

  2. Department of Material Science and Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, People’s Republic of China

    Xuetao Luo

Authors
  1. Kaikai Ye
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  2. Jingqiang Wang
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  3. Pengfei Xing
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  4. Xinghong Du
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  5. Bo Gao
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  6. Jian Kong
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  7. Xuetao Luo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pengfei Xing.

Additional information

Study of the preparation of high purity silicon by a new electro-thermal metallurgy method.

Highlights A new process with addition of CaO-SiO2 slagging agents to prepare high purity silicon was investigated.

Preparation of high purity silicon from silica sand and CRH using an electric arc furnace was studied and reaction areas of the crucible with five regions were analyzed.

The mechanism of impurity elements removed by slag was discussed through the experimental results and thermodynamic analysis.

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Ye, K., Wang, J., Xing, P. et al. Study of the Preparation of High Purity Silicon by a New Electro-thermal Metallurgy Method. Silicon 11, 1175–1184 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-017-9679-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-017-9679-x

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