LONGi Solar, the world's largest integrated PV manufacturer from China, today has announced a new world record efficiency for crystalline solar cells at 26.81% based on its proprietary HJT cell technology. LONGi created history as it broke an over 5-year lasting world record set by Japan's Kaneka in 2017 with an efficiency of 26.7%. LONGi also boasts that a world record efficiency for silicon solar cell is now owned by a Chinese company for the first time, 68 years after the first silicon solar cell was produced by Bell Labs in the US. While Kaneka's record cell was smaller in size with 79 cm2, LONGi says its latest efficiency record has been established on an unspecified "larger wafer size."
LONGi said it achieved the new record efficiency levels by optimizing several parameters, such as improving the n-type doped microcrystalline silicon layer for enhancing current collection, a new intrinsic layer structure developed to enhance passivation performance, and optimized transparent conductive oxide (TCO).
LONGi has been setting efficiency records at breakneck speed in recent months across the silicon cell spectrum. In the HJT field, it announced a 26.5% efficiency in June (see 26.5% Efficiency Record For M6 Silicon HJT Solar Cell). In the meantime, the company attained three certified record efficiency levels of 26.74%, 26.78% and now 26.81% (see graph below), all of which are higher than Kaneka's previous efficiency record and were confirmed by Germany's Institute for Solar Energy Research Hameln (ISFH). LONGi highlighted in its press event with its President Zhenguo Li on Nov. 19 in China, which was attended by TaiyangNews, that the current top efficiency represents a 1.55% absolute efficiency improvement attained within 16 months using industrial equipment.
While the new record cell is very likely based on n-type (although not explicitly said), the company also achieved an impressive 26.12% for a p-type heterojunction solar cell in September (see 26.12% Efficiency For P-Type HJT Solar Cell).
The new overall solar cell silicon cell efficiency comes only 2 months after LONGi introduced a 22.8% solar module based on its proprietary HPBC technology that comes with the same efficiency as the product of the long-time leader SunPower / Maxeon but at higher power. Thus, LONGi also made it in this month's TaiyangNews ranking of commercial top solar modules to the new No. 1. LONGi now not only holds the world record for the highest efficient silicon solar cell but also for the highest efficient and most powerful commercial silicon solar module (see Top Solar Modules Listing – October 2022).
LONGi Solar – among the major global top solar technology companies – will present at the upcoming 3-Day TaiyangNews Virtual Flagship Conference on High Efficiency Solar Technologies – TOPCon, HJT and Beyond, Today & Tomorrow on Nov. 23-25. For free registration, please click here.
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