The Prospect of Bipinganj Sand in High Tech Applications

This study investigates the possibility of using the Bipinganj silica sand in high-tech industries such as semiconductors, telecommunications and optics, microelectronics, solar applications etc. Silica sand sample, collected from the locality named Bipinganj (Sub district Durgapur, District Netrokona) in Bangladesh, was characterized by its mineralogy, composition, crystalinity etc and the characteristics are compared with the high purity silica characteristics. The sand sample being studied is sized mostly from 106 μm to 600 μm, the bulk density is 2.60 g/cc and contains around 0.58% moisture. No clay binder was found in the sand while a negligible amount of organic matter could be detected. The x-ray diffraction analysis showed that the major component was the quartz phase. XRF analysis showed that after acid washing the silica content was enhanced from 97.04% in the as-received sample to 99.05% in the processed condition.