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Concept
Monocrystalline silicon
Summary
Monocrystalline silicon, more often called single-crystal silicon, in short mono c-Si or mono-Si, is the base material for silicon-based discrete components and integrated circuits used in virtually all modern electronic equipment. Mono-Si also serves as a photovoltaic, light-absorbing material in the manufacture of solar cells.
It consists of silicon in which the crystal lattice of the entire solid is continuous, unbroken to its edges, and free of any grain boundaries (i.e. a single crystal). Mono-Si can be prepared as an intrinsic semiconductor that consists only of exceedingly pure silicon, or it can be doped by the addition of other elements such as boron or phosphorus to make p-type or n-type silicon. Due to its semiconducting properties, single-crystal silicon is perhaps the most important technological material of the last few decades—the "silicon era", because its availability at an affordable cost has been essential for the development of the electronic devices on which the present-day electronics and IT revolution is based.
Monocrystalline silicon differs from other allotropic forms, such as non-crystalline amorphous silicon—used in thin-film solar cells—and polycrystalline silicon, which consists of small crystals known as crystallites.
Monocrystalline silicon is generally created by one of several methods that involve melting high-purity, semiconductor-grade silicon (only a few parts per million of impurities) and the use of a seed to initiate the formation of a continuous single crystal. This process is normally performed in an inert atmosphere, such as argon, and in an inert crucible, such as quartz, to avoid impurities that would affect the crystal uniformity.
The most common production technique is the Czochralski method, which dips a precisely oriented rod-mounted seed crystal into the molten silicon. The rod is then slowly pulled upwards and rotated simultaneously, allowing the pulled material to solidify into a monocrystalline cylindrical ingot up to 2 meters in length and weighing several hundred kilograms.
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