Trends in crystalline silicon growth for low cost and efficient photovoltaic cells

Photovoltaic (PV) industry is facing one of its worst times ever. The over-capacity and the reduced market worldwide are impacting the supply/demand across the PV value chain, leading to certainly low sell prices, noticeably below the production costs. As a consequence, many factories are going into insolvency in these times. In addition, the insufficient options to install PV modules demand devices based on well-optimized cost/performance (CP) ratios. Crystalline growth of silicon solar wafers for PV silicon devices has a direct influence on this critical relation. Two industrial approaches aiming at improving the CP ratio will be presented in this paper: i) the use of high-grade umg-Si feedstock and ii) the implementation of new seed-growth monocast process.