PV Tech spoke with Moses Zhang, vice president of Chinese solar manufacturing company Akcome Technology.
The company was established in 2006, and has recently joined the wave of solar manufacturers in the great n-type technology shift. In particular, the company said it is focusing on n-type tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cell technology, “as it is already the mainstream product, by far.”
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In addition to producing TOPCon, the company is keeping funding going towards heterojunction technology (HJT) cell technology, which has emerged as the less mainstream side of the n-type coin in recent months. Zhang said that HJT offers “superior performance in adverse conditions” and “potential cost reductions in the long term” over TOPCon.
Zhang also spoke to PV Tech about the company’s decision to use a copper plating process in its HJT cell production, rather than the traditional silver grid line printing process. He said the copper process provides cost reduction and a roughly 0.5% increase in average cell conversion efficiency. Silver use in solar cell production – particularly HJT, which makes the most intensive use of the metal – is a growing concern amongst the industry as solar production levels skyrocket. PV Tech Premium published a feature on the use of precious metals in solar cell production last week.
