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Past Work:  Electromagnetic Casting

We discovered and patented the semicontinuous electromagnetic cold-crucible casting technique for silicon in the mid-1980s1,2 .  This method has a higher throughput than any other Si ingot technology, because of the easy heat transfer to a cold environment.  A trade-off is that grain size is small because of the rapid cooling.  However, the purity level is very high because this is essentially a "containerless" method.   All things considered, the method makes >13%-efficient production cell efficiencies at a high throughput.   While it has not caught on in the US, it has been more vigorously developed in Europe and Japan, where ingots weighing over 40 kg with cross sections greater than 35 x 35 cm are produced.

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1. Theodore F. Ciszek, "Method and Apparatus for Casting Conductive and Semiconductive Materials," U.S. Patent 4,572,812, 1986. 
2. T.F. Ciszek, "Some Applications of Cold Crucible Technology for Silicon Photovoltaic Material Preparation," J. Electrochemical Soc. 132 (1985) 963.

 


♦♦♦♦♦          ted_ciszek @ siliconsultant.com (remove spaces)             ♦♦♦♦♦

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