Wacker Polysilicon AG (www. wacker. com), is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of hyper-pure polysilicon for the semiconductor and photovol­taic industry, chlorosilanes and fumed silica. In 2010, Wacker increased its capacity to over 30,000 tons and produced 30,500 tons of polysilicon. The next 10,0 tons expansion in NUnchritz (Saxony), Germany, started production in 2011. […]

Hemlock Semiconductor Corporation (www. hscpoly. com) is based in Hemlock, Michigan. The corporation is a joint venture of Dow Corning Corporation (63.25%) and two Japanese firms, Shin-Etsu Handotai Company, Ltd. (24.5%) and Mitsubishi Materials Corporation (12.25%). The company is the leading provider of polycrystalline silicon and other silicon-based products used in the semiconductor and solar […]

World-wide more than 100 companies produce or start up polysilicon production. The following section gives a short description of the ten largest companies in terms of production capacity in 2010. More information about additional polysilicon companies and details can be found in various market studies and the country chapters of this report.

A number of companies develop polysilicon production processes based on fluidised bed (FB) reactors. The motivation to use the FB approach is the potentially lower energy consumption and a continuous production, compared to the Siemens batch process. In this process, tetrahydrosilane or trichlorosilane and hydrogen gases are continuously introduced onto the bottom of the FB […]

In the late 1950s, the Siemens reactor was developed and has been the dominant production route ever since. About 80% of total polysilicon man­ufactured worldwide was made with a Siemens-type process in 2009. The Siemens process involves deposition of silicon from a mixture of purified silane or trichlorosilane gas, with an excess of hydrogen onto […]

The rapid growth of the PV industry since 2000 led to the situation where, between 2004 and early 2008, the demand for polysilicon outstripped the supply from the semiconductor industry. Prices for purified silicon started to rise sharply in 2007 and in 2008 prices for polysilicon peaked around 500 $/kg and consequently resulted in higher […]

China Sunergy was established as CEEG Nanjing PV-Tech Co. (NJPV), a joint venture between the Chinese Electrical Equipment Group in Jiangsu and the Australian Photovoltaic Research Centre in 2004. China Sunergy went public in May 2007. At the end of 2008, the Company had five selective emitter (SE) cell lines, four HP lines, three capable […]

Sanyo (http://sanyo. com/solar/) commenced R&D for a-Si solar cells in 1975. 1980 marked the beginning of Sanyo’s a-Si solar cell mass productions for consumer applications. Ten years later in 1990, research on the HIT (Hetero­junction with Intrinsic Thin Layer) structure was started. In 1992, Dr. Kuwano (former president of SANYO) installed the first residential PV […]