Solidification behavior of highly supercooled polycrystalline silicon droplets

Polycrystalline silicon balls are popularly used for solar cells to lower cost and improve their light collection capability. This article investigates on the microstructure evolution during solidification of polycrystalline silicon. The uniform droplet spray process, a controlled capillary jet break-up process, which enables stringent control of the nucleation and microstructure evolution during solidification of alloy droplets in a thermal spray process, was used to produced mono-sized silicon droplets. The experimental parameters for production of silicon droplets were established and the solidification behavior of silicon droplets was investigated using the modification of the free dendritic growth model and the dendritic fragmentation model. This enabled us to correctly establish the transition supercooling for transformation from lateral growth mode to continuous growth mode to be between 81 K and 172 K. The model was used to predict the microstructure of polycrystalline silicon droplets for solar cells produced by a droplet based manufacturing method, enabling greater control over process parameters and its relation to the final microstructure.