Elsevier

Hydrometallurgy

Volume 16, Issue 1, April 1986, Pages 69-75
Hydrometallurgy

A study of the purification of metallurgical grade silicon

https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-386X(86)90052-6Get rights and content

Abstract

Purification of metallurgical grade silicon to solar grade silicon has been investigated by acid leaching of pulverised silicon and by copper alloying processes. The acid leaching process involved refluxing silicon with aqua regia and HF. Leaching with HF was found to be more efficient than leaching with aqua regia. The copper alloying process, which involved melting silicon in the presence of copper, electroextraction of copper (for reuse) from CuSi alloys and acid washing of anode slime, was also found to yield silicon of suitable purity.

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    In addition, in order to further separate new impurity phases formed by the addition of getter elements, hydrometallurgy or field intensive separation methods were often carried out. For example, the acid leaching process was commonly used to remove inter-grain impurities and collect the refined Si [5,22,23], while the enormous acid consumption was a persistent problem mainly for the removal of alloy agent. Many efforts were made to achieve the in-situ-separation of Si crystals, impurities and alloy melt by adopting some physical field like super gravity [24,25], thermal gradient [26,27] and electromagnetic field [13,28,29].

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