In recent years, the development and industrialization of photovoltaic technology has progressed by leaps and bounds. With the joint efforts of the industry, the conversion efficiency of solar module cell mass production continues to hit new highs. As a mainstream product in the industry, PERC has been widely used in mature applications. At the same time, efficiency improvement has also encountered bottlenecks. The industry technology focus is from P-type to N-type. TOPCon has been widely concerned by the industry due to its low attenuation, great potential for efficiency improvement, and low cost of production line upgrades, and has become the solar panel cell technology with the highest market share in the N-type field. In terms of the industrialization of TOPCon technology, in addition to the pioneering companies that began to deploy as early as 2017, other leading companies in the industry have also begun to deploy TOPCon production capacity and seize the market high ground.

Advanced TOPCon solar modules cell efficiency

There are two types of passivation contact structures that have been commercialized at present: 1) a-Si:H(i)/a-Si:H (p+/n+) based on amorphous silicon, 2) SiOx/poly based on polysilicon -Si(p+/n+), the passivation contact cell using the former is called HJT or HIT cell, and the passivation contact cell using the latter is called TOPCon solar modules cell.

Birth of the TOPCon solar panel cell

In 2013, Feldmann et al. from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) in Germany, inspired by SIPOS, reported a cell with a doped a-Si and μ-Si hybrid emitter structure grown on the SiOx interface layer. It is called Tunnel Oxide Passivating Contacts solar panel cell, or TOPCon solar panel cell for short.