Chinese PV manufacturer Longi has set a new world record of 35.5% power conversion efficiency for a two-terminal crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem solar cell, certified by the European Solar Test Installation (ESTI), pv magazine reports.
Key facts
- Efficiency: 35.5%, a two-terminal (monolithic) crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem cell
- Certified by the European Solar Test Installation (ESTI), part of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Italy
- Beats Longi's previous 34.85% record from April 2025 (certified by NREL)
- Earlier steps in the same program: 31.8% and 33.9% (2023), 34.6% (2024)
- A wide-bandgap perovskite top cell stacked on a crystalline silicon bottom cell captures a broader slice of the solar spectrum than single-junction silicon
- Announced at the 2026 Solar and Storage Innovation Technology Conference; remains a laboratory device with no mass-production timeline disclosed
Why it matters
Single-junction silicon cells are closing in on their practical efficiency ceiling of around 27%, so the industry's next big efficiency gains hinge on tandem architectures that stack perovskite on silicon. Each step past 35% signals that tandems can eventually deliver meaningfully more power from the same panel area — which lowers balance-of-system, land and installation costs per watt across the whole value chain.
The caveats are equally important for buyers and manufacturers: this is a certified lab cell, not a commercial module. Durability, encapsulation, manufacturing yield and cost still stand between record cells and bankable products, and Longi has indicated no active mass-production plan yet.
For module makers, equipment suppliers and downstream EPCs, records like this are a roadmap signal rather than a purchasing decision: perovskite-silicon tandems are the direction of travel, but silicon PERC and TOPCon/HJT remain the workhorses of today's project pipelines.
Sources
- pv magazine coverage - July 15, 2026
SolarXList summary based on publicly available industry sources checked on July 16, 2026.