The rapid growth of the global photovoltaics (PV) industry is increasingly limited by the
availability of suitable Si feedstock material. Therefore, it is very important to explore new
approaches that might allow processing of solar cells with satisfactory energy conversion
efficiency based on inexpensive feedstock material with less stringent impurity control,
ie,“dirty” silicon. Our detailed studies of the distribution of metal impurity clusters in
multicrystalline Si have demonstrated that cells with the same total impurity content can have …