Evolution of grain structures during directional solidification of silicon wafers

• Evolution of grain boundary type depends on different drift speeds.
• Twin boundary proportion increases at higher drift speeds in the EZM experiments.
• Twin boundary is accompanied by new grain formation.

The evolution of grain structures, especially the types of grain boundaries (GBs), during directional solidification is crucial to the electrical properties of multicrystalline silicon used for solar cells. To study this, the electric molten zone crystallization (EMZC) of silicon wafers at different drift speeds from 2 to 6 mm/min was considered. It was found that <111> orientation was dominant at the lower drift velocity, while <112> orientation at the higher drift velocity. Most of the non-∑GBs tended to align with the thermal gradient, but some tilted toward the unfavorable grains having higher interfacial energies. On the other hand, the tilted ∑3GBs tended to decrease during grain competition, except at the higher speed, where the twin nucleation became frequent. The competition of grains separated by ∑GBs could be viewed as the interactions of GBs that two coherent ∑3n GBs turned into one ∑3nGB following certain relations as reported before. On the other hand, when ∑ GBs met non-∑ GBs, the non-∑ GBs remained which explained the decrease of ∑ GBs at the lower speed.