Direct Carbothermic Silica Reduction from Purified Silica to Solar-Grade Silicon

The shortage of silicon for solar cells has much attract in research and development of the low cost mass production process of solar grade Silicon (SOG-Si). The key of the strategy to silicon for solar cells in long terms is the efficiency in reduction. We developed a new concept reduction furnace using the combinatorial method in order to investigate the metallurgical process for silicon reduction. The production of reduced Si shows purity with less 2ppm level.