Electrolysis of a molten semiconductor
Name
Electrolysis of a molten.pdf
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1.19 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7e97a18d6d72d4246baff1020a73f4ec
Author(s)
Yin, Huayi
Chung, Brice Hoani Valentin
Sadoway, Donald Robert
Date Issued
August 2016
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Yin, Huayi, Brice Chung, and Donald R. Sadoway. “Electrolysis of a Molten Semiconductor.” Nature Communications 7 (2016): 12584.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Metals cannot be extracted by electrolysis of transition-metal sulfides because as liquids they are semiconductors, which exhibit high levels of electronic conduction and metal dissolution. Herein by introduction of a distinct secondary electrolyte, we reveal a high-throughput electro-desulfurization process that directly converts semiconducting molten stibnite (Sb[subscript 2]S[subscript 3]) into pure (99.9%) liquid antimony and sulfur vapour. At the bottom of the cell liquid antimony pools beneath cathodically polarized molten stibnite. At the top of the cell sulfur issues from a carbon anode immersed in an immiscible secondary molten salt electrolyte disposed above molten stibnite, thereby blocking electronic shorting across the cell. As opposed to conventional extraction practices, direct sulfide electrolysis completely avoids generation of problematic fugitive emissions (CO[subscript 2], CO and SO[subscript 2]), significantly reduces energy consumption, increases productivity in a single-step process (lower capital and operating costs) and is broadly applicable to a host of electronically conductive transition-metal chalcogenides.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Materials Processing Center
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12584
