Left side: solar cells made of polycrystalline silicon Right side: polysilicon rod (top) and chunks (bottom)
Polycrystalline silicon, or multicrystalline silicon, also called polysilicon, poly-Si, or mc-Si, is a high purity, polycrystalline form of silicon, used as a raw material by the solar photovoltaic and electronics industry.
Polysilicon is produced from metallurgical grade silicon by a chemical purification process, called the Siemens process. This process involves distillation of volatile silicon compounds, and their decomposition into silicon at high temperatures. An emerging, alternative process of refinement uses a fluidized bed reactor. The photovoltaic industry also produces upgraded metallurgical-grade silicon (UMG-Si), using metallurgical instead of chemical purification processes.[1] When produced for the electronics industry, polysilicon contains impurity levels of less than one part per billion (ppb), while polycrystalline solar grade silicon (SoG-Si) is generally less pure.
A few companies from China, Germany, Japan, Korea and the United States, such as GCL-Poly, Wacker Chemie, Tokuyama, OCI, and Hemlock Semiconductor, as well as the Norwegian headquartered REC, accounted for most of the worldwide production of about 230,000 tonnes in 2013.[2]
The polysilicon feedstock – large rods, usually broken into chunks of specific sizes and packaged in clean rooms before shipment – is directly cast into multicrystalline ingots or submitted to a recrystallization process to grow single crystal boules. The boules are then sliced into thin silicon wafers and used for the production of solar cells, integrated circuits and other semiconductor devices.
Polysilicon consists of small crystals, also known as crystallites, giving the material its typical metal flake effect. While polysilicon and multisilicon are often used as synonyms, multicrystalline usually refers to crystals larger than one millimetre. Multicrystalline solar cells are the most common type of solar cells in the fast-growing PV market and consume most of the worldwide produced polysilicon. About 5 tons of polysilicon is required to manufacture one 1 megawatt (MW) conventional solar modules.[3][citation needed] Polysilicon is distinct from monocrystalline silicon and amorphous silicon.
^Méndez, Laura; Forniés, Eduardo; Garrain, Daniel; Pérez Vázquez, Antonio; Souto, Alejandro; Vlasenko, Timur (1 October 2021). "Upgraded metallurgical grade silicon and polysilicon for solar electricity production: A comparative life cycle assessment". Science of the Total Environment. 789: 147969. arXiv:2102.11571. Bibcode:2021ScTEn.789n7969M. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.147969. PMID 34082204. S2CID 232013656.
^Cite error: The named reference BNEF polysilicon-production-2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference polysilicon-marketrealist was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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