Gianluca Coletti

Functie:
Program coordinator at TNO and professor at University of New South Wales on defect and impurity management in crystalline silicon materials

We are at a critical turning point of the energy transition. Despite the pandemic, the global PV module market reached over 180 GW in 2021 and this on top of the more than 100 GW of PV modules shipped for the previous 3 years. More importantly, the PV industry is maturing quickly with a learning rate – the price reduction for each doubling of cumulative PV module shipments - of over 39% since 2006.

Professorship chair

Defect and impurity management in crystalline silicon materials (University of New South Wales)

Research area

This aggressive development is uncommon and unique to the PV industry. My research contributes to this success story with a focus on solutions for today’s challenges and tomorrow’s innovations. We are working to improve the reliability and lifetime of conventional modules with fast and effective in-line techniques and material research. For the near future, we are surpassing today’s efficiency limit of single devices by adopting tandem PV technology. Increasing the efficiency and extending the lifetime of PV leads to further reduce of the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE), to accelerate the Energy Transition and the dominance of solar energy are our goals. With my colleagues at TNO Energy Transition, within the Solliance collaboration and with our industrial and academic partners, we aim to scale-up and demonstrate efficiencies beyond 30% with reliable and industrially relevant photovoltaic tandem modules.

Top publications

  • Bifacial four-terminal perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells and modules, G Coletti, SL Luxembourg, LJ Geerligs, V Rosca, AR Burgers, Y Wu, ..., ACS Energy Letters 5 (5), 1676-1680 (2020)
  • Sensitivity of state‐of‐the‐art and high efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells to metal impurities, G Coletti, Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications 21 (5), 1163-1170 (2013)
  • Impact of metal contamination in silicon solar cells, G Coletti, PCP Bronsveld, G Hahn, W Warta, D Macdonald, B Ceccaroli, ..., Advanced Functional Materials 21 (5), 879-890 (2011)
  • Effect of iron in silicon feedstock on p-and n-type multicrystalline silicon solar cells, G Coletti, R Kvande, VD Mihailetchi, LJ Geerligs, L Arnberg, EJ Øvrelid, Journal of applied physics 104 (10), 104913 (2008)
  • Millisecond minority carrier lifetimes in n-type multicrystalline silicon, A Cuevas, MJ Kerr, C Samundsett, F Ferrazza, G Coletti, Applied Physics Letters 81 (26), 4952-4954 (2002)