Resource commodity
Silica (commodity)
Silica as an industrial mineral commodity. Quartz is abundant; quartz pure enough for a photovoltaic crucible or a semiconductor component is not, and the difference is measured in single parts per million of aluminium and iron.
Classification
- commodity class
- industrialMineral
How this record is known
- 1
- Settled consensus
- Cited as the accepted position of the discipline.
1 of 1 claims on this page cite at least one registered source. Counts describe how each statement is known, not how likely it is to be true.
What Lithoen records
Each claim states how it is known and cites its evidence.
EstablishedHigh-purity quartz defined as typically exceeding 99.995 per cent SiO2, free of visible inclusions, low in lattice-bound Al, Ti and Fe. Photovoltaic use requires iron below 5 ppm and total impurities below 300 ppm.
Reported for this deposit
Quartz is the most common mineral on Earth, and the silica that photovoltaic and semiconductor manufacture can use is not: the usable material is defined as above about 99.99 per cent SiO2 with individual impurities measured in single parts per million, and aluminium and iron are named as the most damaging.
- assertion basis: SOURCE_REPORTED
Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence · one source
Evidence: Long 2024 · Peer-reviewed
Record last updated 2026-09-10. Corrections follow the published corrections policy; superseded claims are retained, never silently edited.