SSN College of Engineering (SSN-COE), Chennai has announced that a team of its researchers led by Professor P. Ramasamy, Dean (Research) have been awarded a grant of Rs 12 crore by the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India, towards Directional Solidification (DS) technology that has the potential to catalyse India’s solar wafer and ingot manufacturing abilities.
The research features an indigenously designed Directional Solidification (DS) technology system for growing high-performance multi-crystalline silicon ingots.
This, the team believes, will aid the production of cost-effective, next-generation solar wafers and ingots and paves way for domestic manufacturing of large and better-quality silicon (mc-Si) ingot with enhanced efficiency of solar cells.
Wafers and ingots are the building blocks for manufacturing solar cells and modules and are essential to India’s clean energy plans. Globally, solar wafer and ingot manufacturing is dominated by China followed by countries such as Japan, Taiwan, and S. Korea.
The team designed and developed mathematical simulations to use on industrial Directional Solidification (DS) system to produce high-quality silicon (mc-Si) ingots.
They studied – melt- crystal interface shape, impurities, and von mises stress under different temperature profiles to achieve better quality silicon (mc-Si) ingot.
Further, transient global heat transfer model was used to optimize the temperature profile of the Directional Solidification (DS) process.
It is the most efficient simulation to receive a slightly convex interface shape with lower thermal stress, and lower impurities in the silicon (mc-Si) ingot.
This breakthrough research, the team claims, has the potential to enable the country to reduce its dependence on imports and become more self-reliant.
Referece- DST website, journal Material Letters, The Hindu