An overview of new developments in crystalline silicon ribbon material technology for solar cells

The market share of photovoltaic products based on crystalline silicon ribbon wafers has been steadily increasing over the past few years and it will soon exceed 15% if present trends continue. Important advances in the leading ribbon technologies continue to be reported and they push the frontiers of ribbon-based wafer and solar cell production toward still more competitive products. The next major developments will be expansion of ribbon wafer technology to manufacturing plants in the 50-100 MW range. I discuss these developments in this paper.