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Purification of Quartz Via Low-Temperature Microwave Chlorinated Calcination Combined with Acid Leaching and its Mechanism

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Abstract

As an indispensable raw material for the semiconductor industry, high-purity quartz has great economic and strategic value. Since aluminum (Al) is a common impurity existing in quartz, removing Al from quartz is required for improving the quality of quartz. This article provides a quick and easy way to remove Al from the quartz. Utilizing the selective heating of microwave and the easy decomposition of NH4Cl during heating, the use of low-grade quartz sand and NH4Cl doping for microwave calcination combined with acid leaching reduced the Al content in a quartz sample from 738.8 ppm to 17.9 ppm, and the total impurity content was reduced from 1459 ppm to 85.4 ppm. According to the fitting results of the experimental data by the shrinking core model, it is determined that the leaching reaction is divided into two parts: external diffusion-controlled and product internal diffusion-controlled, thereby determining the existing state of Al in the quartz. The effects of the microwave treatment temperature, the doping reagent type and the amount on the Al removal rate were compared. Also, the differences between traditional calcination and microwave calcination were discussed.

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Data Availability

The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.51804294, No.51874272); Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No. 1808085ME121); Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic and Energy Conservation Materials, Chinese Academy of Science (PECL2021QN003); Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences Director’s Fund (YZJJZX202018).

Funding

This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.51804294, No.51874272); Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No. 1808085ME121); Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic and Energy Conservation Materials, Chinese Academy of Science (PECL2021QN003); Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences Director’s Fund (YZJJZX202018).

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Jian Chen: substantial contributions to conception, design of work, data analysis, drafted the work or substantively revised it.

Wangfeng Song: substantial contributions to conception, design of work, data acquisition, analysis, drafted the work or substantively revised it.

Xuesong Jiang: design of the work, data acquisition, analysis.

Chen Chen: data acquisition, analysis.

Boyuan Ban: data acquisition, analysis.

Songming Wan: drafted the work or substantively revised it.

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Correspondence to Jian Chen.

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Song, W., Jiang, X., Chen, C. et al. Purification of Quartz Via Low-Temperature Microwave Chlorinated Calcination Combined with Acid Leaching and its Mechanism. Silicon 15, 971–981 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-022-01749-w

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