Skip to main content
European Commission logo print header

Development of solar-grade silicon feedstock for crystalline wafers and cells by purification and crystallisation

Objective

Within the "FoXy" project, a Europe-wide consortium consisting of small and medium size enterprises, industry, research institutes and universities, intends to support the European goals for the Photovoltaic (PV) industry of decreasing module costs to Euro 1/Wp in 2010 and to have 3 GWp PV installed in 2010. Under the realistic assumption that Si-wafer based PV modules will dominate the market in the coming decade, the FoXy partnership will answer the need of the PV market for low price- and high quality SoG-Si feedstock by: 1. Further developing and optimising refining, purification and crystallisation processes for metallurgical SoG-Si feedstock, as well as recycled n-type electronic grade Si. 2.Optimising associated cell and module processes. 3.Settin g input criteria for metallurgical and electronic n-type silicon as raw materials for SoG-Si feedstock. 4.Transferring the technology from laboratory to industrial pilot tests. Through the proposed EU project collaboration, the FoXy consortium will develo p a close partnership along the whole value chain from feedstock to module production. This lays a foundation for new investments in SoG- Si feedstock production and subsequent commercial use of the material produced. Metallurgical silicon, solar grade si licon and recycled material from new and unexploited sources, will be refined to acceptable purity through electrochemical, metallurgical and physical methods under development. The refined SoG-Si material cost target is below 15? per kg. Subsequent direc tional solidification and Czochralski crystal pulling will be optimised with respect to efficiency and yield. Advanced solar cell processing techniques will be developed on thin (200µm) large area (150x150mm2) wafers aiming at 17% cell efficiency. Materia l and unit characterisation will be carried out at all stages of processing for the purpose of optimisation and in order to define standards for p- and n-type solar grade feedstock.

Call for proposal

FP6-2004-ENERGY-3
See other projects for this call

Coordinator

SINTEF - STIFTELSEN FOR INDUSTRIELL OG TEKNISK FORSKNING VED NORGES TEKNISKE HOEGSKOLE AS
EU contribution
No data
Address
Strindveien 4
TRONDHEIM
Norway

See on map

Links
Total cost
No data

Participants (11)