What is Wafer?
A thin sheet of a semiconductor material cut from an ingot or single crystal. The most common applications of wafers are manufacture of PV cells and microdevices like integrated circuits. Wafers are made from extremely pure (99.9999 percent purity) monocrystalline material that has almost no defects. One of the widespread methods of wafer production is Czochralski growth. The silicon wafers used in PV cells are 200-300 micron thick and have the area of about 100-200mm2.
← Back to Solar Energy Glossary