Since people want to buy solar panels, they always struggled to buy polycrystalline or monocrystalline. Because some people said that polycrystalline is not good, and some people said that monocrystalline is too expensive. Let’s take a look at the application of monocrystalline and polycrystalline in solar energy and their respective characteristics to help people make a suitable choice for themselves.
First of all, what is polycrystalline and what is monocrystalline?
- Monocrystalline:
Monocrystalline silicon has two isomorphisms, crystalline and amorphous. Crystalline silicon is further divided into monocrystalline silicon and polycrystalline silicon, both of which have a diamond lattice. The crystals are hard and brittle, have a metallic luster, and are conductive, but not as conductive as metals, increase with temperature, and have semiconducting properties.
Monocrystalline silicon is an indispensable basic material in modern science and technology, such as electronic computers and automatic control systems in daily life. Televisions, computers, refrigerators, telephones, watches and cars are all inseparable from monocrystalline silicon materials. As one of the popular materials for technical applications, monocrystalline silicon has penetrated into every corner of people’s lives.
- Polycrystalline:
Polysilicon is a form of elemental silicon. When molten elemental silicon solidifies under supercooled conditions, the silicon atoms are arranged in a diamond lattice into multiple nuclei. If the nuclei grow into grains with different crystal orientations, the grains combine and crystallize into polysilicon.
Polycrystalline silicon can be used as a raw material for pulling single crystal silicon, and the difference between polycrystalline silicon and single crystal silicon is mainly manifested in physical properties. For example, in terms of anisotropy in mechanical, optical and thermal properties, it is less pronounced than monocrystalline silicon; in terms of electrical properties, polycrystalline silicon crystals are much less conductive than monocrystalline silicon, and even very conductive Difference.
What exactly Difference between them ?
| Items | Monocrystalline Solar Panel | Poly Crystalline Solar Panel |
| Solar Cells | The four corners of the monocrystalline silicon cell are arc-shaped, dense lattice and low impurity content. | The four corners of the monocrystalline silicon cell are arc-shaped. |
| Color | The Solar Cells surface has no crystal pattern, and silicon is dark blue, almost black. | The Solar cell surface has crystal pattern similar to ice flowers. The polycrystalline silicon is sky blue and brightly colored. |
| Manufacture Processing | More production processing steps and energy consumption. But as the technology improved, the Mono. Cells could be thinner than the Poly. | It has fewer production processing steps than monocrystalline cells, so polycrystalline silicon solar cells consume slightly less energy during the manufacturing process than monocrystalline silicon solar cells. during the thinning process, and the rate of finished products is lower. |
| Use | Long life and stability. The weak light effect of monocrystalline modules is stronger than that of polycrystalline modules, and the acceptable spectral irradiance is higher, and it also has relatively good power generation efficiency under the conditions of poor sunlight such as cloudy days. | Long life and stability |
| Efficiency | 17%-25% | Under 15% |
| Price | About 10% higher than the Poly. | About 10% cheaper than the Mono. |
The measured data of attenuation degree show that Monocrystalline and polycrystalline have their own advantages, and it is impossible to distinguish the attenuation speed from the perspective of Monocrystalline and polycrystalline. Relatively speaking, product quality (sealing degree, presence or absence of magazines, cracking or not) has a greater impact on attenuation. The cost performance of polycrystalline is slightly higher than that of monocrystalline at present. It is only for now. As the reduction of the cost of monocrystalline modules, a reversal may occur in the next few years.
In conclusion, the efficiency potential of Monocrystalline cells is great, which is conducive to improving the power generation efficiency per unit area and reducing the cost of power generation. Polycrystalline is essentially an aggregate of a large number of small single crystals, which cannot form large-area high-quality silicon wafers, and the conversion efficiency of polycrystalline cells is far from monocrystalline cells. For distributed generation, the usable area is limited, and high-performance monocrystalline cells are more relied on.
Now may you have a decision for your solar panels purchasing, but what is difference between N-Cell solar panel and P-cell solar panel? Which solar panel is your best option? Nex article will talk about it.
