Recently, LU Ming, professor and Director of the Department of Optical Science and Engineering, Fudan University, with his team yielded a highly efficient solar cell by using black silicon. A related paper A porous Si emitter crystalline-Si solar cell with 18.97% efficiency was published on Nanotechnology on September 19, 2016 and included in the Nanotechnology Select. Ph.D. candidate WANG Liangxing is authored the first, ZHOU Zhiquan and HAO Hongchen the second and the third respectively. LU Ming accepted an interview with Nanotechnology on behalf of the team. The interview, titled Simple silicon etch has multiple photovoltaic benefits, was published online at the official website of the journal.

Currently, the crystalline silicon cell takes about 90% market share in solar cells. It dominates the solar power applications market, and will remain the trend in the coming decades. How to reduce the production costs of solar cells and improve their battery efficiency has become a concern of industry and academia. LU Ming's team creatively proposed a new method to improve the battery efficiency. By using black silicon, the battery efficiency surpasses the exsiting highest level of the similar-structured battery internationally, reaching 18.97%.

From left to right: WANG Liangxing (1st author), ZHOU Zhiquan (2nd author), HAO Hongchen (3rd author) and LU Ming (4th and corresponding author)