6N Silicon, a startup that hopes to address the global shortage of high-grade silicon currently plaguing the solar industry, has attracted initial funding of $5.7 million, the company said Tuesday.

Mississauga, Canada-based 6N says it has developed a new way of turning dirty, inexpensive, metallurgical-grade silicon into solar-grade silicon.

Scott Nichol, 6N’s president and founder, was reluctant to go into any details of the approach, which he described as a "low cost metallurgical process" with several patents pending. He said only that the process promises silicon with acceptable quality for use in the solar industry at a "significantly lower" price than high-grade silicon, which runs about $70 per kilogram.

Solar companies used to rely on scrap silicon from the electronics industry, but the strong growth of solar has caused a silicon shortage. Purifying cheap metallurgical silicon as an alternative is a goal attractive not only to 6N but also to players like Dow Corning, SolarWorld of Germany, and Norway’s Elkem. There are also other small companies, such as Germany’s Solarvalue and CaliSolar in Menlo Park, California, that follow this route (see Solar: Doing the Dirty).

"But nobody has been able to get the purity of metallurgical silicon to the point that it’s good enough for solar in a cost-effective way without blending it with high-grade electronics silicon," said David Berkowitz, general partner with Ventures West, one of the two Canadian investors backing 6N Silicon, the other being Yaletown Venture Partners.

Mr. Nichol said the funding will be used to build a pilot line, which will be in operation sometime during the summer, producing about 70 tons per year of solar-grade silicon. Besides the venture funding, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a nonprofit corporation of the Canadian Government, is contributing $3.8 million to the project.