Prof. Lan is Distinguished Professor in Chemical Engineering at National Taiwan University (NTU) and Founder and Honorary Chairman of Taiwan Photovoltaic Industry Association (TPVIA). He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1991. From 2007 to 2010, he was General Director of Photovoltaics Technology Center at Industrial Technology Research Center (ITRI), Chairman of TPVIA, and Vice Chairman of Photovoltaic Committee of SEMI Taiwan. He has consulted with a few companies including AUO, Sino-American Silicon Products (SAS), Solartech Energy, Sunshine PV, TGE Polysilicon, etc. for silicon materials and solar cells. He received a few national awards including the Outstanding Research Award from National Science Council, the Distinguished Engineering Professor Award from the Chinese Institute of Engineers, the Jin Kaiying Award from the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Special Contribution Award from SAS in recognizing his contribution to the industry in the advanced crystal growth technology for silicon and oxides. His research interests include crystal growth, photovoltaic materials, transport phenomena, and computer modeling. He has published more than 170 scientific papers and held more than 130 patents. He is a committee member for a few international conferences and workshops in the fields of photovoltaics and crystal growth. He is also Associate Editor of the Journal of Crystal Growth. In 2011, he developed the crystal growth technology of the so-called high-performance multi-crystalline silicon. This technology, based on the uniform nucleation of small grains, has become the main stream of silicon photovoltaics. Nowadays, near 40 GWs of solar panels installed every year are using this material. In view of his significant contribution on crystal growth, the International Organization for Crystal Growth (IOCG) awarded him the 2016 Laudise Prize, which is the highest honor in IOCG given triennially. Recently, he also received TECO award for his achievement in silicon materials.

演讲摘要: With the breakthrough of the crystal growth technology for multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) in 2011 based on the uniform small-grain nucleation, i.e., the so-called high-performance (HP) mc-Si, the mc-Si solar cell efficiency in industry has been increased dramatically. The market share of HP mc-Si was near 70% in 2016. Nowadays, HP mc-Si solar cells with the passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC) structure have reached an average efficiency of over 20% in production; the champion is over 22.04%. Recently, a new efficiency record of 22.3% has also been reported based on n-type HP mc-Si using the TopCon cell structure. Besides the success, the HP mc-Si technology is facing significant challenges recently. The diamond-wire (DW) sliced mono-crystalline wafer has emerged a string competitor with sufficiently low cost and high throughput, as well as a much better quality, scrambling to share more PV market. On the contrary, the adoption of DW sawing to HP mc-Si is slow due to poor texturing quality using the traditional acids with or without additives. Although this problem has been greatly resolved by the metal catalyzed chemical etching (MCCE), the environment impact of silver emission remains a big issue to the industry. For a sustainable solution, a green texturing process would be necessary.