18 Facts About Crystalline silicon

1.

Crystalline silicon is the dominant semiconducting material used in photovoltaic technology for the production of solar cells.

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2.

In electronics, crystalline silicon is typically the monocrystalline form of silicon, and is used for producing microchips.

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3.

Production of semiconductor grade silicon involves a chemical purification to produce Hyper-pure Polysilicon, followed by a recrystallization process to grow monocrystalline silicon.

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4.

Solar cells made of crystalline silicon are often called conventional, traditional, or first generation solar cells, as they were developed in the 1950s and remained the most common type up to the present time.

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5.

Amorphous silicon is an allotropic variant of silicon, and amorphous means "without shape" to describe its non-crystalline form.

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6.

However, multi-Crystalline silicon is followed closely by cadmium telluride and copper indium gallium selenide solar cells.

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7.

Crystalline silicon has a high cost in energy because silicon is produced by the reduction of high-grade quartz sand in an electric furnace.

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8.

Monocrystalline silicon is a form in which the crystal structure is homogeneous throughout the material; the orientation, lattice parameter, and electronic properties are constant throughout the material.

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9.

Monocrystalline silicon is fabricated in the form of silicon wafers, usually by the Czochralski Growth method, and can be quite expensive depending on the radial size of the desired single crystal wafer .

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10.

Additionally, other methods for forming smaller-grained polycrystalline silicon exist such as high temperature chemical vapor deposition .

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11.

The term Nanocrystalline silicon refers to a range of materials around the transition region from amorphous to microcrystalline phase in the silicon thin film.

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12.

Protocrystalline silicon has a higher efficiency than amorphous silicon and it has been shown to improve stability, but not eliminate it.

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13.

Amorphous silicon can be transformed to crystalline silicon using well-understood and widely implemented high-temperature annealing processes.

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14.

In both of these methods, amorphous Crystalline silicon is grown using traditional techniques such as plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition .

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15.

The aluminum that diffuses into the amorphous Crystalline silicon is believed to weaken the hydrogen bonds present, allowing crystal nucleation and growth.

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16.

The aluminum that diffuses into the amorphous Crystalline silicon is believed to weaken the hydrogen bonds present, allowing crystal nucleation and growth.

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17.

An excimer laser or, alternatively, green lasers such as a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser is used to heat the amorphous Crystalline silicon, supplying energy necessary to nucleate grain growth.

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18.

Toward this end, a layer of Crystalline silicon dioxide is sometimes added to act as a thermal barrier.

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