SILICON CASTING DEVICE AND PRODUCTION METHOD FOR SILICON SUBSTRATE

摘要

Heating means and cooling means are disposed alternately or heating means and insulating means are disposed alternately along the pulling down direction of solidified silicon when silicon is cast by an electromagnetic induction method to thereby make the temperature control of heating means easy and effectively impart temperature gradient to a silicon ingot to be solidified, whereby it is possible to constantly retain the shape at an solid-liquid interface of molten silicon and cast an silicon ingot reduced in residual strain and residual stress. In addition, productivity per casting device can be enhanced by increasing a casting speed. A solar cell-use silicon substrate excellent in photoelectric conversion efficiency can be obtained by cutting it out from the above silicon ingot reduced in residual strain and residual stress. The above arrangement can be widely applied to the production of a solar cell-use polycrystalline silicon ingot.