Basic mechanisms and models of multi-wire sawing

More than 80% of the current solar cell production requires the cutting of large silicon crystals. While in the last years the cost of solar cell processing and module fabrication could be reduced considerably, the sawing costs remain high, about 30% of the wafer production. At present the large crystals are cut using the multi-wire slicing technology([2]) which has the advantage of a high throughput (several hundred wafers per day and machine), a small kerf loss of about 200,mum and almost no restrictions on the size of the ingots. Basic knowledge about the microscopic details of the sawing process is required in order to slice crystals in a controlled way. In the following the principles of the sawing process will be described in this review article as far as they are understood today.