We report the extraction of silicon via a carbothermal reduction process using a CO2 laser beam as a heat source. The surface of a mixture of silica and carbon black powder became brown after laser beam irradiation for a few tens of seconds, and clear peaks of crystalline silicon were observed by Raman shift measurements, confirming the successful carbothermal reduction of silica. The influence of process parameters, including the laser beam intensity, radiation time, nitrogen gas flow in a reaction chamber, and the molar ratios of silica/carbon black of the mixture, on the carbothermal reduction process is explained in detail.

No abstract

We demonstrated silicon nanoparticle synthesis using a novel CO2 laser pyrolysis reactor. The reactor was designed to have an elongated reaction zone more than 10 times longer than conventional laser pyrolysis systems. Such elongation was achieved by aligning the laser beam and precursor gas stream. SiH4 gas was used to synthesize the silicon nanoparticles. The yield of the nanoparticles was 40.9%, as calculated by comparing the masses of the synthesized nanoparticles and precursor gas used. Silicon nanoparticles synthesized by using a typical reactor with identical gas flow rate conditions and without a focusing lens had a nanoparticle yield of 1.7%, which was far smaller than for the new reactor. The average diameter of as-synthesized silicon nanoparticles was 26.7 nm. Considering that high power CO2 lasers are often used for large scale nanoparticle production by laser pyrolysis, our proposed reactor serves as a proof of concept that demonstrates its potential for large scale nanoparticle synthesis.