On 5 January, the final and award ceremony of the 1st Energy & Electronics Industry Innovation Competition was held in Yibin, Sichuan Province, co-organised by the Industrial Development Promotion Centre of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the Yibin Municipal People's Government. Among the 174 declared projects,  Jetion Solar's project "Low-cost Thin Heterojunction Cell Technology Development and Industrialisation Application" stood out and won the Excellence Award.

Choice of Efficiency

Led by Dr Guo Wanwu, technical leader of Jetion Solar, this competition brings solutions around the core pain points of heterojunction (HJT) technology at this stage, pointing out the direction of HJT’s road to cost reduction. HJT has higher theoretical efficiency, and as a compatibility technology platform, there is much room for efficiency improvement in the future by combining with BC technology and Calcium-Titanium technology, and the company has also planned to lay out the research and development of stacked and BC batteries internally.

The way to break through the cost problem

On the road to mass production of HJT cells, cost is always an insurmountable mountain. In order to solve the biggest pain point of HJT products, Jetion Solar has proposed a solution to reduce costs and increase efficiency through thin wafering and low-cost metallisation technology.

As the first HJT manufacturer in the industry to use the ultra-thin wafer process in batch, Jetion Solar has laid out the automated design and application of ultra-thin wafers to reduce the contact area of wafers with the transport system and jigs to solve the problem of high fragmentation rate, and adopt air suspension to solve the warpage problem of thin wafers, and at the same time, through the thin wafer's fragmentation rate control technology, to enhance the product's mechanical loading, resistance to hidden cracking, and to solve the problem of reduced current and affected conversion efficiency caused by the reduction of light absorption, and has completed the large-volume testing of 80-90um and realised the mass production of 110um.

Through the introduction of low-cost metallisation process, copper dielectric is used to replace the traditional silver paste technology, and conventional patterning means are used to form a new type of electrode structure, silver paste consumption is reduced by 50% compared to the conventional pure silver process, and relative to the mainstream silver-coated copper technology, the reliability of the product is greatly improved, and the cost is reduced without affecting the efficiency of the cell. The clear direction of cost reduction of HJT technology enables Jetion Solar to show firm confidence in meeting the cost challenge, and inspires the company to continue to plough into the research with strong motivation.

Innovation Leads to a Promising Future

Jetion Solar has always taken innovation as its core driving force, and has carried out an all-round layout of technological routes, constantly focusing on exploring various forward-looking technologies and various application scenarios to reduce LCOE. Continuous technological innovation injects living water into Jetion's product iteration. Through the introduction and cultivation of talents and the establishment of a talent training mechanism, Jetion Solar has a high-level technical research and development team. The company attaches great importance to the R&D mode combining "production, learning and research", and has established long-term cooperation mechanisms with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other top universities and institutes in China. The company actively undertakes the project of "Light of XIAKE" Industry Independent Innovation Tackling Plan of Jiangyin Science and Technology Bureau - High-efficiency Heterojunction Solar Cells Technology R&D and Industrialisation, and the project is now being steadily implemented.

On the road of HJT industrialisation, Jetion Solar has anchored itself to a new track, increasing its layout of N-type HJT technology and making precise efforts. In October 2023, the Phase I 2.4GW of Jetion Solar high-efficiency HJT cells project rolled out of the production line, producing high-efficiency HJT cells based on large-size and thin G12 wafers. The workshop is equipped with an intelligent MES traceability system to achieve piece-level quality traceability, and AGV trolleys are used throughout the process to achieve intelligent connection of all processes, helping to build an automated production workshop. At present, the average efficiency of mass production has reached 25.5%, and the efficiency of third-party certification exceeds 26%. This series of innovation and development initiatives enable Jetion Solar to make steady progress in the field of HJT cells, laying a solid foundation for future development.

The efficiency cap will determine the choice of mainstream crystalline silicon cell route in the future. Jetion Solar will continue to take innovation as the driving force, accelerate transformation and upgrading, and make every effort to promote the HJT project to change lanes and achieve industry leadership. It is believed that under the trend of high efficiency and industrialisation of products in the future, Jetion Solar’s HJT products will gain a considerable share in the market by virtue of its dual advantages of cost reduction, efficiency and high efficiency, and inject new vitality into the PV industry.

About Jetion Solar

Jetion Solar (China) Co., Ltd. is a world-renowned solar PV manufacturer, which is affiliated to China National Building Materials Group Corporation (CNBM), one of the FORTUNE 500 companies. Jetion Solar provides solar products, solutions and global EPC services to utility, commercial and residential customers all around the world and was rated as “Tier 1” on BloombergNEF Module Maker Tiering System. Currently, Jetion Solar has an annual production capacity of 2 GW of cells, 2.5 GW of modules and has 1 GW PV project development and investment capability.