Fig. 1: Comparison of PV parameters of high-efficiency silicon solar cells.

a, Measured PCEs of different high-performance c-Si solar cell technologies, including n-type wafer SHJ solar cells (n-SHJ) reported by LONGi and Hanergy, TOPCon solar cells reported by LONGi, Jinko and Fraunhofer ISE (FhG-ISE) and PERC solar cells based on p-type wafer (p-PERC) reported by LONGi and University of New South Wales (UNSW), overlaid on efficiency curves as a function of electrical (V_OC × FF) and optical (J_SC) performances and normalized by the Shockley–Queisser (SQ) limit of a c-Si cell under standard test conditions. The raw data are provided in Supplementary Table 2. The upper limits of the electrical contribution and Richter limit as a function of J_SC are shown for wafer thicknesses of 130 μm (the wafer thickness of SHJ solar cells in this paper) and 110 μm (the ideal wafer thickness for approaching the theoretical limiting efficiency of 29.43%)^65,71. b, Detailed distributions of measured PCEs of different high-performance c-Si solar cell technologies as a function of V_OC and FF. The Green limit³⁶ with ideality factor n = 2/3 (n = 1), assuming a one-diode model and without considering the effects of R_S and R_sh, is drawn with a blue (red) dotted line. The blue to red gradient solid line is derived by theoretical calculation (same as the calculation in Supplementary Fig. 1) contributed from only intrinsic and surface recombination for devices with n-Si wafers of 130 μm thick and 1.5 Ω cm resistivity. The red arrows indicate the trend towards improved efficiency in SHJ solar cells over time. LONGi cells with typical SHJ design and p-a-Si:H (p-nc-Si:H) as the rear emitter are indicated by 1 (2).