Abstract: Solar cells are currently fabricated from a variety of silicon-based materials. Now the major silicon material for solar cells is the scrap of electronic grade silicon (EG-Si). But in the current market it is difficult to secure a steady supply of this material. Therefore, alternative production processes are needed to increase the feedstock. In this paper, EBM is used to purify silicon. MG-Si particles after leaching with an initial purity of 99.88% in mass as starting materials were used. The final purity of the silicon disk obtained after EBM was above 99.995% in mass. This result demonstrates that EBM can effectively remove impurities from silicon. This paper mainly studies the impurity distribution in the silicon disk after EBM.

Key words: silicon refining, electron beam melting, metallurgical grade silicon, solar grade silicon