Ribbon Growth Methods Direct production of silicon sheets for the fabrication of solar cells has been regarded as a promising approach in view of achieving the low-cost objectives of terrestrial photovoltaics [9]. This has yielded a score of ribbon growth methods which differ for the means used to shape the freezing meniscus and for the relative orientation of the growth and pull vectors, Fig. 4 [10, 11]. Among these, the vertical growth of self supported or supported ribbons is the only approach which can yield thin sheets (Table 1). Table 1. Ribbon growth processes in a developmental stage; most of them have already demonstrated AMI efficiencies above 14% with the exception of the S-WEB process.
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