Ingot & Wafer Production

Manufacturing process
from Poly Silicium to Wafer
Confidential
for internal use only

Silicon & Wafer

2. Ingot & Wafer Production Process

Video: 1.1_Solarmaus30052004.wmv

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Ingot & Wafer Line
Process Flow Overview (multi/mono-like)

Turnkey Solution

Ingot Line Brick Line Wafer Line

Ingot
Squaring

Brick
Gluing

Crucible
Crucible Brick
Crucible
Charging
Charging Grinding
Charging
Wire
Sawing

Brick
Crystallization
Inspection
Wafer
Cleaning

Brick
Cropping
Final Wafer
Inspection

Recycling

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2. Ingot & Wafer Production Process

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3.1 Graphite support crucible,
crucible & coating layer

inside of crucible is coated

by silicon nitride layer

crucible is centered on
graphite support plate

graphite support plate

 crucible suppliers: ceradyne (USA), covalent (Japan), vesuvius

(France)
 silicon nitride layer prevents sticking of silicon to crucible
 crucible gets soft at temperatures near the silicon melting point
so it needs support by graphite plates from bottom an from
sides

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 3.1 Crucible Gen5 & Gen6

Gen6 means ingots consists

of 6*6 bricks

Gen5 means ingots consists

of 5*5 bricks

 Gen5 typical charge weight of 420 to 650 kg

 Gen6 typical charge weight of 600 to 850 kg
Source: ALD / SCU-flyer 2012

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 3.1 Charging of crucible

There are several methods to charge a crucible. Normally you aim for
a high fill factor using different types of silicon:
 Polysilicon of different size distributions (chips, chunks, rods)
 Self recycling silicon (bottom and side-plates of multi-ingots as well
as out of spec bricks
 Add dopant (depending also on amount of recycling silicon)
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 3.2 Crystallization phase and
directional crystallization

1 2 3 4 5
liquid silicon liquid silicon

solid silicon solid silicon

Heat extraction to copper heat sink control by

 bottom heater and
 stepwise opening of shutters of triple heat gate (steps 3-5)

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 4.1 Squaring

 Squaring equipment cuts multi-crystalline ingots

(Gen5/ Gen6) into bricks and remove the
sidewalls
 The cut-away sidewalls parts of the multi ingot will
be recycled for the production of multi-crystalline
silicon ingots (Silicon Recycling).

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