Wuxi Songci Electromechanical, a subsidiary of Chinese automation equipment manufacturer Autowell Technology, has come out with a new crystal growth furnace with reduced oxygen content for mono-Si cells that it claims can increase cell efficiency by 0.1%.
Songci says n-type cells are likely to achieve higher efficiency than p-type cells if these have low oxygen content, which leads to higher conversion efficiency. A better engineered and proven crystal growth furnace is then a prerequisite for high-quality mono-Si cells.
The company built its new machine, keeping in mind the fact that a bigger furnace and large crystal size can take longer time to stabilize the temperature of melted silicon. This can adversely affect the stability of oxygen content in single crystals.
Its SC-1600-LO₂ Czochralski Monocrystal Growth Furnace was designed after extensive research and testing into the mechanism of concentric circle defect in n-type single crystals and corresponding oxygen control technology.
"The numerical simulation of Czochralski process and the basic study of concentric circle defect helped the team to discover the correlation between the probability of concentric circle defect and the oxygen content of single crystals," it adds.
Songci machine is equipped with a water-cooling system, furnace chamber, isolation valve and a pulling head for crystal lift and rotation, and perched on a crucible lift system.
According to the management, Songci's low oxygen content type crystal growth furnace ensures efficiency improvement and benefits customers by helping them recoup the cost of equipment quickly.
A supplier to several big manufacturing firms globally, including Adani Solar in India, Songci says it is now developing intelligent crystal growth system on the basis of big data. In the future, it aims to clear technical bottlenecks and integrate crystal growing with artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to further automate the functions.
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