Solar Silicon

Products

Calisolar silicon is purified in a unique, liquid-phase process producing solar silicon without the high energy and specialized equipment of conventional vapor-phase silicon purification.

Strict quality controls deliver consistent results.

The conventional process for manufacturing solar silicon is far too expensive. It is energy intensive, requires billions of dollars in large-scale capital equipment and has significant environmental issues that limit factory locations.

Calisolar takes a revolutionary approach to producing solar silicon. The company’s innovations and proprietary processes drive down production costs by:

Using standard foundry equipment at a much lower cost
Purifying silicon in a liquid state at temperatures far below the distillation temperatures of vapor phase silicon purification—consuming a fraction of the energy
Enabling economic production at smaller scale

Calisolar does all this without compromising the ability to use the silicon to produce high performance solar cells. Calisolar silicon has been used to create millions of cells at demonstrated quality levels as good or better than conventional multicrystalline cells, including average production efficiencies well above 16 percent, stable performance, and easily meeting industry standard certifications. As a result, silicon production can be rapidly and cost-effectively ramped up in smaller increments to keep a steady pace with demand, eliminating the cyclicality of availability that has plagued the industry.

Key Features

No trade-offs in cell performance
Demonstrated average production cell efficiency >16percent
Stable cell performance
Breakdown voltage characteristics compatible with most 60-cell module designs—20 cells per bypass diode
Meets all industry standards—modules pass IEC and UL testing