Hi, welcome back to new Physicist. There are two types of crystalline silicon solar cells. Monocrystalline and polycrystalline. What’s the difference between them? How they are manufactured? Why one is much more efficient than others? Why polycrystalline solar cell surface looks like cracked glass? Once I learned about What’s happening inside a solar cell factory all my doubts vanished. Do you know, How crystalline solar cells are manufactured? It all starts with the raw material, which in this case is sand or quartzite, more precisely silicon dioxide, from which we’ve to extract precious silicon. Silicon is abundantly available, making it the second most available element on Earth. Together with coal or other sources of carbon, the silicon sand is melted down at over 2000 degrees Celsius in an electro arc furnace. The result is metallurgical silicon with a purity of 99%. The silicon is collected, usually in the form of solid rocks. These rocks are being melted t...
The Renewable Energy Specialist