High purity quartz is an important industrial mineral required in the production of micro-electronics and electronics. For most mined quartz, there is an issue overall with impurity and varying consistency in purity that forces additional processing depending on the application the mineral is used for.
In the quartz industry, “ultra-high purity quartz” is defined as quartz sand silica or powder that is produced from extremely high purity quartz deposits with very little outside contaminants. The ultra-high purity designation refers to electronics-grade, optical-grade or laboratory-grade quartz featuring low alpha ray emmissions and very little to contamination by iron, chromium, manganium or copper. It carries a SiO2 (silicone dioxide) content of at least 99.995%.
High purity quartz deposits and ultra-high purity quartz deposits in the Spruce Pine Mining District region of North Carolina have been found to have the purest quartz deposits found so far in the world. Other prominent regions include Drag, Norway and certain parts of China. Deposits in China have shown to be high purity but with consistency issues and varying levels of purity across the full deposit.
Ultra-high purity quartz is relied upon as a component or manufacturing requirement for applications such as laboratory glass, specialty ceramics, epoxy molding compounds, halogen & mercury lamps, fused quartz tubing, high end solar parnel crucibles and ingots used for semiconductor manufacturing.