• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.618-622
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• 2010

Cost-effective purification methods of silicon were carried out in order to replace the conventional Siemens method for solar grade silicon. Firstly, acid leaching which is a hydrometallurgical process was preceded with grinded silicon powders of metallurgical grade (~99% purity) to remove metallic impurities. Then, plasma treatments were performed with the leached silicon powders of 99.94% purity by argon plasma at 30 kW power under atmospheric pressure. Plasma treatment was specifically efficient for removing Zr, Y, and P but not for Al and B. Another purification step by EB treatment was also studied for the 99.92% silicon lump which resulted in the fast removal of boron and aluminum. That means the two methods are effective alternative tools for removing the doping elements like boron and phosphor.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.598-607
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• 1997

Fractional melting process involves heating an alloy within its liquid-solid region simultaneously ejecting liquid from the solid-liquid mixture. The extent of the purification obtained is comparable to that obtained in multi-pass zone refining. The new fractional melting process in which centrifugal force was used for separating the liquid from the mixture has been developed and applied to the purification of the metallic grade. Refining ratio depends on partition ratio, cake wetness and diffusion in the solid, and it was controlled by various processing parameters such as rotating speed and heating rate. The new parameter called "refining partition coefficient" has been suggested to estimate the effects of processing variables on the refining ratio. Because major impurities in MG-silicon such as Fe, Al, Ni have a low segregation coefficient, good purification effect is expected. The results of refining MG-silicon(98%) showed that 3N-Si was obtained in refined solid of 50% of the original sample.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.232-236
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• 2008

Recently the shortage of silicon resources especially for poly-silicon of purity higher than 99.9999% leads to search for the more cheap and quick synthesizing routes for silicon feedstock. In order to solve this situation, we investigated the purification process of metallurgical grade (MG) silicon of purity around 99% by the acid leaching and following the unidirectional solidification. MG-Si lumps are pulverized with a planetary mill, and then leached with HCl/$HNO_3$/HF acid solution. As a result, the concentration of metal impurities including Al, Fe, Ca, Mn, etc. decreased dramatically. This process led to silicon content higher than 99.99%. The purified silicon powders were compacted and have been melted and uni-directionally solidified with heat exchange method (HEM) furnace. The properties of multicrystalline silicon ingots were specific resistance of $0.3{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ and minority carrier life time (MCLT) of $3.8{\mu}{\cdot}sec$.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.52-58
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• 2022

Silicon carbide powder was prepared from carbon black and silicon recovered from waste solar panels. In the solar power generation market, the number of crystalline silicon modules exceeds 90%. As the expiration date of a photovoltaic module arrives, the development of technology for recovering and utilizing silicon is very important from an environmental and economic point of view. In this study, silicon was recovered as silicon carbide from waste solar panels: 99.99% silicon powder was recovered through purification from a 95.74% purity waste silicon wafer. To examine the synthesis characteristics of SiC powder, purified 99.99% silicon powder and carbon powder were mixed and heat-treated (1,300, 1,400 and 1,500 ℃) in an Ar atmosphere. The characteristics of silicon and silicon carbide powders were analyzed using particle size distribution analyzer, XRD, SEM, ICP, FT-IR, and Raman analysis.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.50 no.12
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• pp.907-911
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• 2012

High purity silicon can be obtained from Al-Si alloys by a combination of solvent refining and centrifugation. Silicon purification by crystallization of silicon from an Al-Si alloy melt was carried out using 2N and 4N purity aluminum and 2N purity silicon as raw materials. The effect of the purity of raw materials on the final silicon ingot purity by centrifugation was investigated for an Al-50 wt% Si alloy. Alloys were melted using an electrical resistance furnace, and then poured into a centrifuging apparatus. A silicon lump like foam was obtained after centrifugation and was leached by an acid in order to get pure silicon flakes. Then silicon flakes were melted to make a silicon ingot using an induction furnace. The purities of the silicon flakes and silicon ingot were enhanced significantly compared to those of the raw materials of silicon and aluminum. The silicon ingot made of 4N aluminum and 2N silicon showed the lowest impurities.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.383-383
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• 2009

Silicon is commercially prepared by the reaction of high-purity silica with wood, charcoal, and coal, in an electric arc furnace using carbon electrodes, so called the metallurgical refining process, which produces ~98% pure Si (MG-Si). This can be further purified to solar grade silicon (SoG-Si) by various techniques. The most problematic impurity elements are B and P because of their high segregation coefficients. In this study, we explored the possibility of the using Cat-CVD for Si purification. The existing hot-wire CVD was modified to accommodate the catalyzer and the heating source. Mo boat (1.5 cm ${\times}$ 1 cm ${\times}$ 0.2 cm) was used as a heating source. Commercially available Si was purchased from Nilaco corporation (~99% pure). This powder was kept in the Mo-boat and heated to the purification temperature. In addition to the purification by cat-CVD technique, other methods such as thermal CVD, plasma enhanced CVD, vacuum annealing was also tried. It is found that the impurities are reduced to a great extent when treated with cat-CVD method.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.303-313
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• 1991

The Purification mechanism of high purity aluminum was studied through the variation of stirring speed and coolant flow rate in the stirring method. In the stirring method the degree of purification was changed as the following factors;the variation of diffusion boundary layer thickness the variation of growth rate and the solute concentration of the residual melt. The concentration of Fe and Si was decreased as the stirring speed and the radial distance increased. In a high stirring speed of 2000rpm with unidirectional stirring mode, the uniformity of solutes was obtained. On the other hand, the purification of Si was done by the combinations of stirring method, fractional melting and acid leaching. In the case of Si purification, the centrifugal force developed in the melt acted as the significant purification factor. It was possible to obtain the purified 3N grade Si crystal after the complete elimination of residual aluminum by fractional melting and acid leaching.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.637-641
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• 2012

Due to its high production cost and relatively high energy consumption during the Siemens process, poly-silicon makers have been continuously and eagerly sought another silicon route for decades. One candidate that consumes less energy and has a simpler acidic and metallurgical purification procedure is upgraded metallurgical-grade (UMG) silicon. Owing to its low purity, UMG silicon often requires special steps to minimize the impurity effects and to remove or segregate the metal atoms in the bulk and to remove interfacial defects such as precipitates and grain boundaries. A process often called the 'gettering process' is used with phosphorus diffusion in this experiment in an effort to improve the performance of silicon solar cells using UMG silicon. The phosphorous gettering processes were optimized and compared to the standard POCl process so as to increase the minority carrier lifetime(MCLT) with the duration time and temperature as variables. In order to analyze the metal impurity concentration and distribution, secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) was utilized before and after the phosphorous gettering process.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.75-81
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• 1999

HF purification performance of an ion exchange membrane(IEM) was evaluated with 0.5% HF spiked with 10ppb of Fe, Ni and Cu nitrates. The result show that after less than five turnovers through an IEM, the metallic impurity concentration drops below 1ppb. The decrease rate can be fitted to a model assuming the experimental tanks to be continuously stirred tank reaction and that the metallic impurity concentration after the IEM is a function of the single-pass purification efficiency of the membrane, the concentration before purification and the metals desorbed form the IEM. The Concentration after purification was investigated up to a cumulative Fe loading of 300ppb in the 23 liter recirculated loop. It increases linearly vs. cumulative loading and can be explained by the Langmuir theory resulting in a purification efficiency at the equilibrium of close to 99.5% in this loading regime.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.614-619
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• 2005

The water-soluble defoamers were fabricated by the mixing polyol, modified silicon resin, silicon resin and surfactant. For the defoamers, the various properties such as phase-separation time, viscosity and defoamerability were examined. The phase-saparation time of PPG mixtures was found to be PPG 400>PPG 3,000>PPG 1000. When PPG 1000 was mixed, mixtures represented the excellent defoamerability. The phase-saparation time of silicon resin mixtures was TSF-451-350>TSF-451-200>TSF-451-50. As more of high molecular silicon resin was mixed, the resulting mixtues showed reduced defoamerability. When the TSF-451-50 was mixed, the mixture's volume was increased because of the reduction of solubility. The modified silicon resin was smoothly dispersed in water, but the compatibility with PPG was not good. The defoamerability of surfactant was SPAN 20>SPAN 60>SPAN 80. SPAN 80 showed good miscibility for the silicon resin, but not good for YAS 6406 or PPG 1000.