High Efficient Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells - Competitor and IP Landscape Report - Key players, innovators and industry analysis

Direct energy conversion from sunlight to electricity is obtained through solar cells. Advantage of solar cells is that they do not have any mechanical parts which make them easy to use, maintenance free and leading to longer life. Silicon (Si) is widely used semiconductor material for solar cells. Advantage of Si over other semiconductor devices is due to well developed microelectronics industry which has considerable knowledge of working with Si. This makes Si a better candidate for solar cells as compared to other semiconductor material such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) or germanium (Ge).

The present efficiency limit and cost of the solar cell are not in comparison with conventional energy sources. Efficiency of solar cells is about 24.7% in laboratory and 14% commercially. Some practices which are followed to reduce the losses are better material selection, proper manufacturing techniques or changing design procedure of the cell. Low efficiency is due to high percentage of losses. Reflection loss, resistive loss, recombination loss and thermal loss tend to reduce the efficiency of solar cell. The present report discusses in detail the different mechanisms of losses occurring in the solar cells. Also techniques that are implemented to reduce, losses are addressed briefly.

Method of analysis:
Efficiency improvement of crystalline Silicon solar cells IP analyses started with identification of control patents which are highly relevant to the topic. It follows the identification of various keywords related to the concept and also identifying IPC, ECLA, US, F-term and DWPI classes relevant to the context. Logical combinations of the classes and keywords are framed and are searched in Thomson Innovation (TI) database. The search resulted in a total of 4706 INPADOC patent families, out of which 2425 patents have been identified as relevant. These patents are used for further analytics.

Key findings:
From the analytics, it is observed that Sharp Corp, Mitsubishi Corporation and Canon Inc is the major players in high efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells. Also IP activity based on publication year and priority year is observed and the trend shows that since 2005 there is considerable growth in the research. Among the top players Canon KK, Sandia Corp and BP Corp North America Inc have good number of cited patents and among technologies. H01L31/04 (Semiconductor Devices as Photovoltaic Converters) and H01L31/042 (Solar Cell Arrays) have good quality patents. Top cited patents and article list has also been furnished in the report.

Table of Contents:

1. Executive summary
2. Introduction
2.1 anatomy of a solar cell
2.2 Solar cell efficiency factors
2.3 Losses in solar cells
3. Taxonomy
3.1 Taxonomy based on technology and class
4. Top cited patents
5. Top cited articles
6. Key findings
6.1 IP activity
6.1.1 Publication year wise
6.1.2 Priority year wise
6.2 Top assignees
6.3 Top inventors
6.4 Geographical distribution
6.5 Top IPC classes
6.6 Efficiency improvement wise classification of patents
6.7 Filing trend- Efficiency improvement based
6.8 Assignee based classification of patents
6.8.1 Electrical efficiency improvement wise classification
6.8.2 Optical efficiency improvement wise classification
6.8.3 Thermal efficiency improvement wise classification
6.8.4 Efficiency improvement by cell structure wise classification
6.8.5 Efficiency improvement by cell formation wise classification
6.9 Statistical analysis
7. References
7.1 Background references
7.2 Image references
Appendix A: Search strategy
A.1 Control patents
A.2 Patent classification
A.2.1 US classes
A.2.2 IPC classes
A.2.3 ECLA classes
A.3 Concept table
A.4 Search strategy
Appendix B: Sample analysis
B.1 Sample Patent analysis

List of Tables
Table 1: Top cited patents
Table 2: Top cited articles
Table 3: Control patents
Table 4: US classes
Table 5: IPC classes
Table 6: ECLA classes
Table 7: Concept table
Table 8: Search strategy
Table 9: Sample patent analysis

List of Figures
Figure 1: Losses in solar cell
Figure 2: Taxonomy based on technology and class
Figure 3: IP activity- Publication year wise
Figure 4: IP activity- Priority year wise
Figure 5: Top assignees
Figure 6: Top inventors
Figure 7: Geographical distribution
Figure 8: Top IPC classes
Figure 9: Efficiency improvement wise classification of patents
Figure 10: Filing Trend- Efficiency improvement based
Figure 11: Assignee based classification-Electrical efficiency improvement
Figure 12: Assignee based classification-Optical efficiency improvement wise
Figure 13: Assignee based classification: thermal loss reduction
Figure 14: Assignee based classification: Efficiency Improvement by cell structure
Figure 15: Assignee based classification- Efficiency improvement by cell formation
Figure 16: Assignee vs. Average citation frequency