Liquid Phase Epitaxy on Foreign Substrates

As the cost of the silicon wafer is about half the final cost of the solar cell module, the use of crystalline thin film on non-silicon low-cost substrate is of great interest. The main issues are the compatibility of the substrate with 

Combination of seed layer and LPE was also studied at Max-Planck-Institute [39]. They used a glassy carbon substrate with a double seed layer a-Si/pc-Si (grain size is 1 pm). Low defect density and continuous layers over 4 cm2 have been obtained with Ga/Al melt. Resulting grain size was 10 pm. 

ECN [40] developed silicon-enriched SiAlON tape-cast ceramic substrates using a plasma-sprayed Si seeding layer. Closed layers of 1 cm2 have been achieved with grain sizes of 10-100 pm when using a melt of In with 1%A1 at 960° C. 

Some continuous layers have also be grown by UNSW with a Sn/Al melt on borosilicate glass using a seeding layer of a-Si on borosilicate glass at 750°C [68]. Grain sizes of 50pm with a (111) preferential orientation were 

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