High Purity Porous Silicon Powder Synthesis by Magnesiothermic Reduction of Tunisian Silica Sand

Crystalline metallurgical silicon nanopowder was successfully produced from Tunisian silica sand by magnesiothermic reduction. Silica sand was first transformed into silica powder via a specific chemical process. The produced silica powder was reduced by magnesium granules at a temperature range of...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:SILICON 2021-03, Vol.13 (3), p.667-676
Main Authors: Darghouth, A., Aouida, S., Bessais, B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Byproducts
Chemistry
Chemistry and Materials Science
Crystallites
Energy costs
Environmental Chemistry
Infrared radiation
Inorganic Chemistry
Lasers
Leaching
Low temperature
Magnesium compounds
Materials Science
Metal silicides
Optical Devices
Optics
Original Paper
Photonics
Polymer Sciences
Porous media
Porous silicon
Raw materials
Sand
Silicon
Silicon dioxide
Thermal analysis
Vibration mode
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Crystalline metallurgical silicon nanopowder was successfully produced from Tunisian silica sand by magnesiothermic reduction. Silica sand was first transformed into silica powder via a specific chemical process. The produced silica powder was reduced by magnesium granules at a temperature range of 500–800 °C. Thermal analysis shows that a low-temperature ramp rate (5 °C min −1 ) allows the initiation of a solid-state reaction at around 528 °C. X-ray diffraction shows that the produced mixture is the result of a rather complex reaction leading to the formation of Si, and other by-products such as MgO, Mg 2 Si, and Mg 2 SiO 4 . In order to remove the by-products, a two-steps leaching approach was used. After leaching, Si with a rate exceeding 99% was obtained. SEM images show that the produced silicon powder is composed of macro and microporous silicon crystallites having an average size dimension of about 47 nm. The porosities of the produced metallurgical silicon particles are resulting from the nature of the magnesio-reduction process. Raman investigations confirm that the resulted metallurgical silicon powder is essentially composed of silicon nanoparticles–based porous matrix. A comparison of the Fourier Infrared Spectroscopy spectrum of the produced metallurgical silicon powder with slightly doped solar grade silicon shows that both products exhibit a bulk Si-Si stretching vibrational mode at around 619 cm −1 . These results show that pure porous and crystalline silicon powder can be easily produced at low energy cost from an abundant local and low-cost raw material.
ISSN:1876-990X
1876-9918
DOI:10.1007/s12633-020-00433-1