Interesting research article posted on CEO.CA @cargo For those interested here is a research article published by NCBI + US National Library of Medicine discussing Nanoporous Silicon . $HPQ silicon and Apollon Solar are mentioned in the article. Other companies are also mentioned in the article but they all seemed to be specializing in nano-tech and are not involved with the manufacturing of metallurgic grade silicon. $HPQ patented PUREVAP process IMO can play a huge part in the electronic grade silicon industry and we will be on electronic grade Si manufacturers/users radar when the GEN3 comes on line:)
"For electronic grade Si, step (1) typically entails initial formation of solid “metallurgical grade” silicon, currently manufactured at scale by reduction of quartz with carbon at 1700 °C in blast furnaces, a process with not only extreme thermal requirements but also in copious formation of CO2 as well. Given the fact that production of 1 ton of Si requires 12 MWh of electricity consumed, researchers are striving to find less-energy-consuming routes [43]. That silicon then has to be purified through a careful recrystallization process to incredible levels (>99.999%) to become solar or electronic “grades”, ultimately (after a series of dicing, polishing, and associated steps) in the form of wafers. It is this material that is subsequently anodized (Section 2.1 above)."