Crystalline silicon

Crystalline silicon (c-Si) is the crystalline forms of silicon, either multicrystalline silicon (multi-Si) consisting of small crystals, or monocrystalline silicon (mono-Si), a continuous crystal. Crystalline silicon is the dominant semiconducting material used in photovoltaic technology for the production of solar cells. These cells are assembled into solar panels as part of a photovoltaic system to generate solar power from sunlight.

In electronics, crystalline silicon is typically the monocrystalline form of silicon, and is used for producing microchips. This silicon contains much lower impurity levels than those required for solar cells. Production of semiconductor grade silicon involves a chemical purification to produce hyperpure polysilicon followed by a recrystallization process to grow monocrystalline silicon. The cylindrical boules are then cut into wafers for further processing.

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. Because they are produced from 160–190 µm thick solar wafers—slices from bulks of solar grade silicon—they are sometimes called wafer-based solar cells.

Solar cells made from c-Si are single-junction cells and are generally more efficient than their rival technologies, which are the second-generation thin film solar cells, the most important being CdTe, CIGS, and amorphous silicon (a-Si). Amorphous silicon is an allotropic variant of silicon, and amorphous means "without shape" to describe its non-crystalline form.

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