Photovoltaic Silicon Production by Plasma Process

The use of a plasma process in the photovoltaic industry has to be considered from the point of view of the development of dry processes. This opens a lot of possibilities: purification, cleaning, etching, steps currently used in both electronic and metallurgical industries. In order to present potential applications in the photovoltaic field, we propose firstly the analysis of scrapping, etching, oxydizing of silicon by non equilibrium low pressure plasmas, and secondly the purification of metallurgical grade silicon by a thermal plasma.