The photovoltaic sector is now led by silicon solar cells because of their well-established technology and relatively high efficiency. Currently, industrially made silicon solar modules have an efficiency between 16% and 22% (Anon (2023b)).
Commercially, the efficiency for mono-crystalline silicon solar cells is in the range of 16–18% (Outlook, 2018). Together with multi-crystalline cells, crystalline silicon-based cells are used in the largest quantity for standard module production, representing about 90% of the world's total PV cell production in 2008 (Outlook, 2018).
The value chain for crystalline silicon solar cells and modules is longer than that for thin-film solar cells.
1. Introduction The silicon photovoltaic (PV) solar cell is one of the technologies are dominating the PV market. The mono-Si solar cell is the most efficient of the solar cells into the silicon range. The efficiency of the single-junction terrestrial crystalline silicon PV cell is around 26% today (Green et al., 2019, Green et al., 2020).
PV Solar Industry and Trends Approximately 95% of the total market share of solar cells comes from crystalline silicon materials . The reasons for silicon’s popularity within the PV market are that silicon is available and abundant, and thus relatively cheap.
During the past few decades, crystalline silicon solar cells are mainly applied on the utilization of solar energy in large scale, which are mainly classified into three types, i.e., mono-crystalline silicon, multi-crystalline silicon and thin film, respectively .