Argon recycling: The Argon0 recovers and recycles up to 95% of purge gas from a vacuum furnace

摘要

High purity argon (better than 99.999%) is used as a shield gas in the production of silicon ingots, to be fabricated into wafers, for solar cells and microelectronic devices. Argon is used to control the impurity levels present during the manufacturing process to an acceptable level. In response to rising costs, the trend in the solar industry has been to reduce the argon purge flows to a minimum, typically about 30slm; however, this cost reduction comes at the expense of wafer purity which can result in lower performance solar cells.