Hideaki Sasaki

Application of Electron Beam Melting to the Removal of Phosphorus from Silicon: Toward Production of Solar-Grade Silicon by Metallurgical Processes

Removal methods of impurity from metallurgical-grade silicon (Si) are intensively studied to produce solar-grade silicon (SoG-Si) with a smaller economical load and lower cost. Removal of phosphorus (P) has been an important issue because of difficulties in application of conventional metallurgical methods such as solidification refining. Because P evaporates preferentially from molten Si due to its high vapor pressure, electron beam (EB) melting has been applied to the purification of Si. The evaporation of impurity P from Si is considered based on previous thermodynamic investigations here, and several research reports on EB melting of Si are reviewed.

Thermodynamic Measurements of Alloys and Compounds by Double Knudsen Cell Mass Spectrometry and Their Application to Materials Processing

For the development and optimization of materials processing a collection of thermodynamic information concerning substances that participate in the reactions is important. One fundamental way to obtain such information is to measure the vapor pressure of gas species under conditions where they are in equilibrium with the condensed phases. Over the past 60 years Knudsen cell mass spectrometry has been used to identify and quantitatively determine gas species at high temperatures. This article describes thermodynamic foundation and examples of measurements in order to demonstrate the use of mass spectrometry focusing on the field of process metallurgy and recycling processes.