NOVELTY - Producing silicon comprises: (a) providing a silicon or a silicon-material, a hydrogen source, a catalyst and optionally an inert gas; (b) producing a gas mixture comprising silane, hydrogen and an inert gas by catalytic gasification of silicon or silicon-containing compound through reaction of silicon or silicon-containing compound with hydrogen source in presence of catalyst at elevated temperature; (c) reducing temperature of gas mixture immediately after gasification; and (d) separating silane and hydrogen, and optionally an inert gas from gas mixture.    USE - The process is useful for producing silicon and silane mixture, where the application is either for large scale centralized or on-site-distributed applications (all claimed) incluidng manufacturing of high purity polysilicon, and semiconductor devices incluidng integrated circuits, photovoltaic solar cells, LCD-flat panels and other electronic devices.    ADVANTAGE - The process: utilizes catalyst, thus greatly reducing the reaction temperature and enhancing the reaction rate of silane formation; simultaneously co-purifies the gas mixtures (silane and hydrogen, with inert gas) to remove phosphor and boron compounds and other harmful impurities (without separating silane from hydrogen or inert gas), thus greatly reducing the cost of, and simplifying the manufacturing process of silane.    DETAILED DESCRIPTION - Producing silicon comprises: (a) providing a silicon or a silicon-material, a hydrogen source comprising hydrogen or a material capable of undergoing a reaction with silicon or the silicon-material to form a silane, a catalyst capable of accelerating the reaction and/or lowering the reaction temperature and optionally an inert gas; (b) producing a gas mixture comprising silane, hydrogen and an inert gas by catalytic gasification of the silicon or silicon-containing compound through the reaction of silicon or silicon-containing compound with the hydrogen source in the presence of the catalyst at an elevated temperature; (c) reducing the temperature of the gas mixture immediately after the gasification to below 500 degrees C to avoid the decomposition of the silane; and (d) separating silane and hydrogen, and optionally an inert gas from the gas mixture to form a co-purified silane mixture with other impurities each less than 1 ppm. An INDEPENDENT CLAIM is also included for a reactor system, comprises: a gasification chamber (120); a silicon-material feeding bin; means of supplying silicon and alloys powder in the chamber in the form of a silicon; a hydrogen feeding port for a hydrogen sources to be fed into the gasification chamber; a hydrogen source to gasify silicon and alloys such as atomic hydrogen by plasma and hydrogen ion by electrochemical cells; means of supplying hydrogen sources and silicon sources to the reactor chamber comprising a quench unit, an internal heating unit and a co-purification unit (130), in the form of a bulk, silicon rod, a stream of silicon powder, melt, vapor, suspension in liquid molten salts, and any form of solid, liquid or vapor silicon; means of loading the catalyst to silicon and alloys; means of quenching the gas existing in the reaction chamber; means of co-purifying the silane mixture after quenching of the product gas mixture; and optionally means of recycling catalyst and hydrogen and inert gas recovered in the process at the end of the process.    DESCRIPTION OF DRAWING(S) - The figure shows the process flow diagram the production of high purity polysilicon starting from low purity metallurgical silicon.    Unit having metallurgical silicon or silicon alloys (110)    Gasification unit (120)    Heat exchanger (122)    Purifying unit which purifies mixture (130)    Polysilicon production unit (150)