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A New Design of Side Heater for 3D Solid-liquid Interface Improvement in G8 Directional Solidification Silicon Ingot Growth

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Abstract

G8 ingots have a significant advantage in production capacity and yield improvement for directional solidification silicon. To improve the uniformity of the 3D solid/liquid (S/L) interface at the periphery of the G8 ingots, we developed a new structure for side heater that installs six electrodes compared to three in convectional AC heaters. A nearly flat and symmetrical structure of 3D S/L interface was obtained in the G8 ingot grown with the newly designed side heaters, while a distorted shape was observed at the periphery of G8 ingots grown with the conventional side heater. The driving force of the melt convection, the Lorentz force in the silicon melt, was calculated with a simplified hot zone model. It made a reduction of around 90% in the hot zone with the new side heater and could be enhanced by increasing the frequency of the AC power. This work presents a promising method to enhance the uniformity of the 3D S/L interface for large-size (G8) silicon ingots growth.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Lingxin Fang at Zhejiang Chint Solar Co., Ltd. for producing the PERC solar cells and Meike Silicon Energy Co., Ltd. for ingots casting. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 62025403, 61974129, and 61721005), National Key Research and Development Project (2018YFB1500401 and 2020YFB1506502).

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All data will be made on request.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 62025403, 61974129, and 61721005), National Key Research and Development Project (2018YFB1500401 and 2020YFB1506502).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials and School of Material Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Zhiqiang Zhang, Xuegong Yu & Deren Yang

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  1. Zhiqiang Zhang
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  2. Xuegong Yu
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  3. Deren Yang
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Contributions

Zhiqiang Zhang: Conceptualization, data collection and analysis, writing - original draft preparation. Xuegong Yu: Resource, writing - review and editing. Deren Yang: Supervision, writing - review and editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xuegong Yu or Deren Yang.

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Zhang, Z., Yu, X. & Yang, D. A New Design of Side Heater for 3D Solid-liquid Interface Improvement in G8 Directional Solidification Silicon Ingot Growth. Silicon 14, 9407–9416 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-022-01701-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-022-01701-y

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