Silicon, used to make some of the earliest photovoltaic (PV) devices—is still the most popular material for solar cells.Silicon must be refined to a purity of 99.9999%. In single-crystal silicon, the molecular structure—which is the arrangement of atoms in the material—is uniform, because the entire structure is grown from the same crystal. This uniformity is ideal for transferring electrons efficiently through the material.
To make an effective PV cell, however, silicon has to be “doped” with other elements to make it N-type and P-type. The crystalline of a material indicates how perfectly ordered the atoms are in the crystal structure. Silicon, as well as other solar cell semiconductor materials, can come in various forms: single-crystalline, multi crystalline, polycrystalline, or amorphous. In a single-crystal material, the atoms making up the framework of the crystal are repeated in a very regular, orderly manner from layer to layer.
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