The efficiency ceiling of single-junction silicon photovoltaics—known as the Shockley-Queisser limit of roughly 29%—has officially been broken in commercial-scale panels. Tandem cells stacking a high-bandgap perovskite top layer on a crystalline silicon base layer have sustained 34.2% power conversion efficiency in continuous outdoor testing.
Capturing the Entire Solar Spectrum
The perovskite layer efficiently absorbs high-energy blue photons while allowing lower-energy red and infrared photons to pass through to the underlying silicon layer. With encapsulation polymers preventing moisture degradation, production costs per watt are forecasted to decline by 40% by 2028.
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