Prospects of Microwave Heating in Silicon Solar Cell Fabrication – A Review

Solar energy is only renewable energy source that does not depend on earth's resources. Current industrial manufacturing of solar cells use manufacturing steps that have many sustainable issues. So it becomes very important to promote technologies that are more sustainable than current state of the art. This paper will look into prospects of microwave heating for silicon solar cell fabrication in this perspective. Microwave heating is very different from conventional heating techniques and application of microwave for semiconductor processing purposes has many advantages. It provides avenue to crystallisation of amorphous solids, reduction of defects, selective heating, reduction in processing time, sintering of powdered materials and so on. Sustainability analysis of microwave heating over conventional heating will be presented to judge its suitability in solar cell fabrication. Status of different technologies using microwave heating which could replace or assist in different fabrication steps of solar cells will be reviewed. Based on these reviews, possible fabrication schemes of silicon solar cells will be presented.