SiliconPV + nPV + bifiPV 2022

Dear friends of silicon photovoltaics!

2020 and 2021 have been difficult times due to the COVID19 situation, which affected our private life in so many ways, as well as our professional situation. Although it is still unclear whether the situation will change completely in 2022, with the vaccination programs under way, there is hope that for 2022 many things might evolve a little bit “back to normal”.

The original plan to host SiliconPV 2022 in Hangzhou (China) unfortunately had to be abandoned due to the travel restrictions for foreign participants that have been announced recently. Therefore, it was decided that the conference will be hosted by University of Konstanz in Constance (Germany). As we do not know how the COVID19 situation will evolve over the next months, we plan that the conference will take place in a hybrid format to allow both, participation in person/presence and online.

Although tremendous progress could be achieved over the last years and decades with creating new ideas/processes/technologies and bringing a lot of them from the laboratory environment into the mass market, crystalline silicon photovoltaics is still a technology that bears a lot of opportunities to increase conversion efficiency and bring down levelized costs of electricity. This will add to the unbelievable progress we had seen in this field concerning growing numbers of installed power with new records of installed power every year. But this is only the beginning! To fight global warming and all events related to this, we have to shift gears again globally and work together even more than in the past. SiliconPV 2022 will hopefully add to this goal.

We therefore invite you to hand in the results of your latest research in form of abstracts and present them to the conference audience. The abstracts will be evaluated in a blind review process by scientific experts in the field and the program will be put together strictly based on scientific quality. Oral and visual presentations will be valued equally to ensure that all accepted contributions will get the attention they deserve. The contributions can also be published in a regular journal to ensure global visibility. The scientific experts will act as reviewers in this process, too.

The conference topics range from material aspects, characterization, new cell concepts, process technologies, process integration, cell manufacturing, cell assembly to module technology, including the rapidly increasing activity on tandem approaches, where a high-bandgap partner is integrated above a silicon bottom cell to achieve conversion efficiencies beyond the limits of single-junction silicon cells.

After two years of no “real” or only online version of SiliconPV, this hopefully gives us the opportunity to meet, discuss, eat/drink and argue again in person, and not only in a virtual surrounding. Personally, I miss these opportunities of spontaneous exchange of ideas a lot and look very much forward to be able to do it again. For people not being able to attend in person, the organizers of the conference have now experience in supporting the conference with an additional online format.

Again, like in previous years, the nPV Workshop will be coupled to SiliconPV with an overlapping day of both events on Wednesday. And in addition, this time the bifiPV Workshop on Friday will also be linked to the SiliconPV conference to enable all interested people to attend these events in a condensed way.

I am convinced that you will enjoy the atmosphere of the conference as well as the location and welcome you to the 12th SiliconPV 2022 in beautiful Konstanz!

Giso Hahn and Pierre Verlinden

Chair and Co-Chair of SiliconPV 2022