One among the world's largest integrated solar PV products manufacturer LONGi Solar has reported to have achieved 26.5% power conversion efficiency for its silicon heterojunction (HJT) solar cells, on M6 full size monocrystalline silicon wafers.
The M6 wafer size used for this research was 274.4 cm2. The company did not share the steps it incorporated to achieve this level of efficiency.
In a brief statement, LONGi claims this is a new breakthrough in efficiency for large-size monocrystalline silicon PV cells. It was validated by the Institute for Solar Energy Research (ISFH) in Germany's Hamelin.
The efficiency is the highest for any M6 cell device and comes close to the world record for any single-junction silicon solar cell from Kaneka, which produced a 26.7% efficienct HJT back contact cell in 2017, but that was a much smaller cell size of 79 cm2. Kaneka also produced a larger HJT back contact cell at 179 cm2 with 26.6% efficiency.
Back in March 2022, ISFH validated LONGi's 25.40% efficiency claim for indium-free HJT solar cells (see 25.40% Efficiency For Indium-Free HJT).