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CENTESIL: A Pilot Plant for R&D in Polysilicon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2011

Carlos del Cañizo ,
Araceli Rodríguez ,
Gabriel Ovejero  and
Antonio Luque
Carlos del Cañizo
Affiliation:
canizo@ies-def.upm.es, Universidad Politécnicad de Madrid, Instituto de Energía Solar, Madrid, Spain
Araceli Rodríguez
Affiliation:
arodri@quim.ucm.es, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Dpto Ingeniería Química, Madrid, Spain
Gabriel Ovejero
Affiliation:
govejero@quim.ucm.es, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Dpto Ingeniería Química, Madrid, Spain
Antonio Luque
Affiliation:
a.luque@upm.es, Universidad Politécnicad de Madrid, Instituto de Energía Solar, Madrid, Spain
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Abstract

The tremendous expansion and the relative avidity for silicon of the solar cell technology has resulted in a dramatic change of the polysilicon industry structure. While in the past the polysilicon was manufactured almost exclusively for the semiconductor industry, in 2008 around 67% of the total production was consumed by the solar industry. The consequence is that while in 2000 virtually only 7 companies supplied all the polysilicon consumed worldwide, in 2008 there were 11 major suppliers and numerous new ventures entering this market. Based on this in 2006 CENTESIL was founded as a new private-public partnership venture to deal with the polysilicon research. For it, a pilot plant is in advanced state of construction that has been preceded of some laboratory-size implementations. The pilot plant is designed for a production capacity of 60 kmol of trichlorosilane per day and 2 t of purified silicon per batch at the CVD reactor. The purpose is to allow the photovoltaic companies worldwide to count with an independent research centre to help them to establish their own polysilicon plant. The R&D activities already carried out by CENTESIL and the present status of the project are discussed in the paper.

Keywords

photovoltaicSipurification
Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 1210: Symposium Q – Photovoltaic Materials and Manufacturing Issues II , 2009 , 1210-Q05-06
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2010

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