Prof. Ye received the Bachelor of Science from University of Science and Technology of China in 2001, and the Ph.D. from University of California, Davis in 2005. After graduation, he worked in Silicon Valley on memory chips and solar cells for 7 years. In August 2012, he joined Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology & Engineering (NIMTE), Chinese Academy of Sciences. Prof. Ye’s research activities are focused on crystalline silicon solar cells, perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells, and wide-bandgap semiconductors. He is now the director of Optoelectronic Materials and Devices Research Lab.
Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact（TOPCon）solar cells (SC) is replacing the PERC technology at an unprecedented speed, far exceeding any predictions of PV technology development. TOPCon SC started its mass production in 2022, and represented over 1/4 of the shipment in 2023, and is estimated to take ~70% of the market share in 2024. Although the current widely used TOPCon SC is a fundamental TOPCon SC only with the TOPCon structure on the rear-side, the warehouse efficiency has been significantly improved during the past year from 24.0-24.2% to 24.8-25.2% for now, mainly due to the improvement of the Si wafer quality, the front boron emitter with higher sheet resistance, the selective emitter, the laser-induced firing together with the modified silver paster, the improved passivation of TOPCon, and the reduced parasitic absorption in the rear-side poly-Si etc. In this presentation, the current status of TOPCon SCs will be reviewed and the future trends of technology will be analyzed. Also, the research activities on TOPCon SC at Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering will be introduced.
