Recycling silicon kerf waste: Use cryolite to digest the surface oxide layer and intensify the removal of impurity boron.

Abstract The surface oxide layer (SiO2 layer) is still one of the main limitations of the recovery and purification of silicon kerf waste (SKW). Herein, to recycle SKW as the low-boron silicon ingot, an effective combination strategy that digests the surface oxide layer by pretreatment and then removes impurity boron by slag treatment is proposed. In the pretreatment part, the surface oxide layer of SKW was successfully digested into a liquid phase after mixing 10.5 wt% cryolite and sintering at 1400 °C, and the obtained SKW-ceramic has a dense structure. Moreover, when holding at 1400 °C for 2 h, the boron concentration in SKW-ceramic was decreased to 5.75 ppmw, and the removal rate reaches 14.18%. In the slag treatment part, CaO and SiO2 are selected as slag agents. The CaO/SiO2 mass ratio and reaction temperature were determined to be 2 and 1600 °C based on thermodynamic simulation. Besides, Na2O formed due to the dissociation of cryolite, which can enhance the oxygen ion activity and boron-absorbing capacity of the slag. The experimental result exhibited that the boron removal efficiency reached 86.56%. The simplicity and scalability of this strategy provide a better alternative for the recovery of SKW.