Silicon sheets grown from powder layers by a zone melting process

Abstract The growth of silicon sheets from fine-grained powder by a zone melting process is reported. Incoherent focussed light is used as the heat source. Polycrystalline sheets of 100 mm × 50 mm and a thickness of about 700 μm are grown. Recent modifications of the melting process led to fairly large grain sizes. Test solar cells of 20 mm × 20 mm were fabricated and showed efficiencies of up to 11.5%.