what is silicon wafers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A wafer, also called a slice or substrate, is a thin slice of semiconductor material, such as a crystalline silicon, used in electronics for the fabrication of integrated circuits and in photovoltaics for conventional, wafer-based solar cells.he boule is then sliced with a wafer saw (wire saw) and polished to form wafers. The size of wafers for photovoltaics is 100â200 mm square and the thickness is 200â300 Î¼m. In the future, 160 Î¼m will be the standard. Electronics use wafer sizes from 100â450 mm diameter.