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Production

Silicon of 96–99% purity is made by carbothermically reducing quartzite or sand with highly pure coke. The reduction is carried out in an electric arc furnace, with an excess of SiO used to stop silicon carbide (SiC) from accumulating:

This reaction, known as carbothermal reduction of silicon dioxide, usually is conducted in the presence of scrap iron with low amounts of phosphorus and sulfur, producing ferrosilicon. Ferrosilicon, an iron-silicon alloy that contains varying ratios of elemental silicon and iron, accounts for about 80% of the world's production of elemental silicon, with China, the leading supplier of elemental silicon, providing 4.6 million tonnes (or 2/3rds of world output) of silicon, most of it in the form of ferrosilicon. It is followed by Russia (610,000 t), Norway (330,000 t), Brazil (240,000 t), and the United States (170,000 t). Ferrosilicon is primarily used by the iron and steel industry (see below) with primary use as alloying addition in iron or steel and for de-oxidation of steel in integrated steel plants.

Another reaction, sometimes used, is aluminothermal reduction of silicon dioxide, as follows:

Leaching powdered 96–97% pure silicon with water results in ~98.5% pure silicon, which is used in the chemical industry. However, even greater purity is needed for semiconductor applications, and this is produced from the reduction of tetrachlorosilane (silicon tetrachloride) or trichlorosilane. The former is made by chlorinating scrap silicon and the latter is a byproduct of silicone production. These compounds are volatile and hence can be purified by repeated fractional distillation, followed by reduction to elemental silicon with very pure zinc metal as the reducing agent. The spongy pieces of silicon thus produced are melted and then grown to form cylindrical single crystals, before being purified by zone refining. Other routes use the thermal decomposition of silane or tetraiodosilane (SiI). Another process used is the reduction of sodium hexafluorosilicate, a common waste product of the phosphate fertilizer industry, by metallic sodium: this is highly exothermic and hence requires no outside energy source. Hyperfine silicon is made at a higher purity than almost any other material: transistor production requires impurity levels in silicon crystals less than 1 part per 10, and in special cases impurity levels below 1 part per 10 are needed and attained.

Silicon nanostructures can directly be produced from silica sand using conventional metalothermic processes, or the combustion synthesis approach. Such nanostructured silicon materials can be used in various functional applications including the anode of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), other ion batteries, future computing devices like memristors or photocatalytic applications.