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Status and perspectives of crystalline silicon photovoltaics in research and industry

Nature Reviews Materials volume 7, pages 597–616 (2022)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 24 October 2022

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Abstract

Crystalline silicon (c-Si) photovoltaics has long been considered energy intensive and costly. Over the past decades, spectacular improvements along the manufacturing chain have made c-Si a low-cost source of electricity that can no longer be ignored. Over 125 GW of c-Si modules have been installed in 2020, 95% of the overall photovoltaic (PV) market, and over 700 GW has been cumulatively installed. There are some strong indications that c-Si photovoltaics could become the most important world electricity source by 2040–2050. In this Review, we survey the key changes related to materials and industrial processing of silicon PV components. At the wafer level, a strong reduction in polysilicon cost and the general implementation of diamond wire sawing has reduced the cost of monocrystalline wafers. In parallel, the concentration of impurities and electronic defects in the various types of wafers has been reduced, allowing for high efficiency in industrial devices. Improved cleanliness in production lines, increased tool automation and improved production technology and cell architectures all helped to increase the efficiency of mainstream modules. Efficiency gains at the cell level were accompanied by an increase in wafer size and by the introduction of advanced assembly techniques. These improvements have allowed a reduction of cell-to-module efficiency losses and will accelerate the yearly efficiency gain of mainstream modules. To conclude, we discuss what it will take for other PV technologies to compete with silicon on the mass market.

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Fig. 1: From raw silicon to solar modules.
Fig. 2: Defect creation in silicon as a function of light and temperature.
Fig. 3: Schematic representation of typical solar cell architectures.
Fig. 4: Schematic process flows for the fabrication of solar cells using different architectures.
Fig. 5: Typical performance characteristics of crystalline silicon solar cells.
Fig. 6: From cells to modules.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank S. Joos and M. Lehman for the design of Fig. 4 and the figure in Box 2, respectively. C.B., M.B. and F.-J.H. acknowledge funding by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union within the projects Ampere under grant 745601 and Highlight under grant 857793, and by the Swiss Federal Office for Energy within the project CHESS under grant SI501253-01. G.H. acknowledges support from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Photovoltaics and Thin-Film Electronics Laboratory (PV-Lab), Institute of Microengineering (IMT), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Christophe Ballif, Franz-Josef Haug & Mathieu Boccard

  2. AMROCK Pty Ltd., McLaren Vale, South Australia, Australia

    Pierre J. Verlinden

  3. School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Pierre J. Verlinden

  4. Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

    Pierre J. Verlinden

  5. State Key Laboratory of PV Science and Technology, Trina Solar, Changzhou, Jiangsu, China

    Pierre J. Verlinden

  6. Photovoltaics Division, Department of Physics, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Giso Hahn

Authors
  1. Christophe Ballif
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  2. Franz-Josef Haug
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  3. Mathieu Boccard
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  4. Pierre J. Verlinden
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  5. Giso Hahn
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Contributions

The authors contributed equally to all aspects of the article.

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Correspondence to Christophe Ballif.

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Nature Reviews Materials thanks Stefan Glunz and Martin Green for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Related links

A record value of 29.1%: www.businesswire.com/news/home/ 20181212005060/en/ Alta-Devices-Sets-29.1-Solar-Efficiency-Record

International Energy Agency: https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2020

SmartCalc.CTM: www.cell-to-module.com

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Ballif, C., Haug, FJ., Boccard, M. et al. Status and perspectives of crystalline silicon photovoltaics in research and industry. Nat Rev Mater 7, 597–616 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-022-00423-2

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