Manufacturing ordinary mono solar panels or polycrystalline cells requires many different processes starting from a raw material called quartzite. A quartzite is a form of quartz sandstone. Quartz stone, also known as silica sand, is converted into metallurgical grade silicon by combining carbon and quartz stone in an electric arc furnace. This process occurs at very high temperatures and produces 99% pure silicon. The next step is to convert metallurgical-grade silicon to pure polysilicon using a chemical purification process called the Siemens process or metallurgical-grade silicon (UMG-Si) upgraded using a lower-cost metallurgical process.
Next, the polysilicon is doped with trace amounts of boron or phosphorus to become either P-type or N-type silicon. At this stage, polycrystalline silicon can be melted and cast into large rectangular blocks, which are then sliced into thin slices using diamond wire cutting to produce polycrystalline or polycrystalline wafers.
To make more efficient monocrystalline silicon wafers or cells, the Czochralski process can be used to make doped silicon into pure solid ingots. The process involves melting polysilicon at high pressure and temperature to slowly grow individual large single crystals called ingots. These steps are required in order to obtain crystals in a single crystal photovoltaic solar cell:
- Silica sand is purified in an electric arc furnace to produce 99% pure silicon
- 99% of the silicon is further refined, close to 100% pure silicon
- Silicon doped with boron or phosphorus (P-type or N-type)
- Melt and extract the doped silicon into an ingot
- Round ingots are diamond wire cut into thin square wafers
- A thin base wafer is coated with an ultra-thin P-type or N-type silicon layer to form a PN junction
- Anti-reflection layer and metal fingers are added to the surface of the battery
- Flat ribbon busbars (as shown) or thin wire (MBB) busbars are added
Jiaxing Fuying Composite Materials Co., Ltd. is a mono solar panels manufacturer and supplier in China. All of the company's mono solar panels factory produces double glass modules, PV solar panels, other photovoltaic products, and PVB composite functional films.