Ribbon-growth-on-substrate: Progress in high-speed crystalline silicon wafer manufacturing

The ribbon-growth-on-substrate (RGS) silicon wafer manufacturing technology is the most promising highspeed wafer production technique under development at the moment. It has the promise to lead to a manufacturing technology, which allows silicon wafer manufacturing at the 25 MWp/a to 50 MWp/a level. A future development of this technology in the areas, RGS machine prototyping, wafer quality improvement and solar cell process optimization should lead to a commercialization of this technology in 2005. In the following a status of the RGS technology today and the most probable road ahead is outlined.