Biologically derived ceramic substrates for crystalline silicon thin-film solar cells

Biologically derived ceramics have been manufactured and tested as a new substrate material for layer deposition for thin-film solar cells. The starting material is a low-cost high density wood-fibre board, which is transferred to a dense Si/SiC ceramic. The resulting substrates have a low porosity of only 1 vol. %. SiC- and Si-layers have been deposited on the substrates by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). The grain size of the silicon layers were enlarged by zone melting recrystallization (ZMR). The substrates showed good compatibility with layer fabrication processes.