Removal of impurities from metallurgical grade silicon by electron beam melting

• Published in: Journal of semiconductors Vol. 32; no. 3; pp. 033003 - 1-5
• Main Authors: Luo, Dawei (大伟 罗), Liu, Ning (宁刘), Lu, Yiping (一平 卢), Zhang, Guoliang (国梁 张), Li, Tingju (廷举 李)
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 01.03.2011
• Subjects: Disks; Impurities; Metal scrap; Photovoltaic cells; Purity; Semiconductors; Silicon; Solar cells
• ISSN: 1674-4926
• DOI: 10.1088/1674-4926/32/3/033003

Solar cells are currently fabricated from a variety of silicon-based materials. Now the major silicon material for solar cells is the scrap of electronic grade silicon (EG-Si). But in the current market it is difficult to secure a steady supply of this material. Therefore, alternative production processes are needed to increase the feedstock. In this paper, EBM is used to purify silicon. MG-Si particles after leaching with an initial purity of 99.88% in mass as starting materials were used. The final purity of the silicon disk obtained after EBM was above 99.995% in mass. This result demonstrates that EBM can effectively remove impurities from silicon. This paper mainly studies the impurity distribution in the silicon disk after EBM.