With silver prices rising, more major solar manufacturers are expected to switch to copper for cell metallization. Radovan Kopecek from ISC Konstanz explains pv magazine which he expects the entire sector to follow. Ning Song of the University of New South Wales says a small efficiency trade-off may be acceptable if the cost savings are significant and do not introduce new reliability risks.
The recent rise in silver prices has subsided somewhat, with the price per troy ounce now just below the all-time high of over $94 per troy ounce reached earlier this week. Following announcements by Chinese module manufacturer Longi that the company is moving towards copper-based metallization, and by China-based metallization paste supplier DK Electronic Materials that a gigawatt-scale customer will use its copper-rich paste for commercial production, 2026 could mark a major milestone in the PV industry’s phase-out of the precious metal.
“I think the industry will follow in those footsteps as the PV industry is a ‘follower industry’.” When the big players start something, the others follow,” says Radovan Kopecek, co-founder and director of the German research institute the International Solar Energy Research Center Konstanz (ISC Konstanz). pv magazine. “An immediate switch to copper is technically and economically feasible. Copper screen printing can be implemented quickly and we have received many questions about it.”
Join us on January 28 for pv magazine Webinar+ | The Solar Module Market Playbook: Managing Prices, Risks, and Other Procurement Challenges.
We combine real-time market data, case studies and an interactive Q&A to help EPCs, developers, investors and distributors secure high-quality PV modules at competitive prices, ensuring project financeability.
According to Kopecek, project developers are “absolutely” willing to embrace copper metallized products, adding that when the technology is properly implemented, performance is no different from silver metallized modules. “However, I don’t expect the industry to give up on silver completely,” he said. “Silver will remain around 2 mg to 3 mg per watt because it is still needed to overshoot, act as a diffusion barrier and make contact with the emitter.”
Ning Song, from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, explained that even if using a high copper paste results in a small drop in efficiency, the price trade-off should be acceptable to manufacturers. “This trade-off is acceptable if it does not introduce new reliability risks. Ultimately, the decision depends on how well the efficiency loss can be compensated at the module and system level,” she said. pv magazine.
Song’s team is currently working to identify practical routes to reduce silver use in PV cells, both through incremental improvements to existing screen-printed metallization and through longer-term research into alternative paste systems. “In the short term, aggressive silver reduction within existing screen printing processes is the most commercially viable option as it minimizes disruption to current production lines,” she said.
“From a purely technical perspective, the most promising long-term solution is the one that delivers the best combination of low contact resistance, minimal recombination losses at the contacts, high conductivity, sufficient ductility to enable narrow, well-formed grid lines with less optical shadow, and robust long-term reliability,” she said. “That is regardless of the specific metal used.”
This content is copyrighted and may not be reused. If you would like to collaborate with us and reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Popular content
