Back to results
US 8,894,959 B2Granted
Silicon Production method
AssigneeTokuyama Corporation
InventorsSatoru Wakamatsu, Hiroyuki Oda
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
There is provided a silicon production method which comprises producing semiconductor grade silicon while producing solar grade silicon by converting a portion of trichlorosilane into silicon for solar cells. There is also provided an industrially advantageous method that removes contaminants from a chlorosilane circulating system which produces trichlorosilane in producing silicon from trichlorosilane by a vapor deposition method.
Claims3
A silicon production method comprising:
- a semiconductor grade silicon production step (step A) of producing semiconductor grade silicon on a heated substrate by feeding trichlorosilane vapor together with hydrogen gas into a deposition reactor having the heated substrate,
- a chlorosilane separation step (step B) of separating hydrogen and a chlorosilane from gas discharged from the step A,
- a disproportionation step (step C) of passing a mixture comprising a low-boiling-point silane component and tetrachlorosilane which is obtained in the step B through a chlorosilane disproportionation solid catalyst bed to produce a mixture having an increased proportion of trichlorosilane,
- a trichlorosilane separation step (step D) of obtaining trichlorosilane by distilling and purifying the mixture obtained in the step C,
- a collection step (step (E(i))) which comprises mixing a stream of the trichlorosilane obtained in step D, which contains chlorosilyl phosphine impurities, with hydrogen, decomposing said impurities by raising the average temperature of a reaction gas to over 800° C., depositing solar grade silicon, and collecting the solar grade silicon,
- a recycling step (step (E(ii))) which comprises recycling a separate stream of trichlorosilane obtained in step D, which is different from the stream used in step E(i), back to step A, and
- a replenishing step (step F) of replenishing a separately prepared chlorosilane to any of the steps A to E(i).
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.