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It's not just sand. It's sand with the oxygen removed. The oxygen (especially every last atom) doesn't want to leave. Silicon has to be purified to 99.9999%
by mchannon 14y ago
It's not just sand. It's sand with the oxygen removed. The oxygen (especially every last atom) doesn't want to leave.
Silicon has to be purified to 99.9999% at the very least to make a crappy solar cell. Add four more 9's to get to making decent microprocessors. Getting certain impurities out (that behave exactly like silicon in a chemical sense) is really difficult.
- sukuriant 14y agoYou're using some interesting numbers. Citation?
- duaneb 14y agohttp://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing-components/processors/how-sand-is-transformed-into-silicon-chips-599785 http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing-components/proces... http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/solar-grade-silicon-at-low-cost/ http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/solar-grade-silicon-a... That's 30 seconds of Googling. I can't vouch for how accurate they are.