24th National Seminar on Crystal Growth and Applications

The majority of PV solar cells is fabricated from bulk silicon crystals, which may be either single-crystalline or multi-crystalline. Market share of mono- and multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) is more than 90% at present and will be so in the foreseeable future. Multi-crystalline silicon is an important material with advantages of low-production cost and high conversion efficiency of solar cells. It has a market share of more than 60% among all photovoltaic materials. Directional solidification (DS) method has become the leading technique for producing mc-Si. Indian solar cell industries import silicon cells and convert them into solar modules. Today 98% of the silicon cells imported into country are mc-silicon cells.