Dr Daniel Chen

Daniel Chen is currently a Senior Photovoltaics Engineer at the Australian-based start-up SunDrive Solar and an Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Photovoltaics and Renewable Energy Engineering at UNSW. His work is currently focused on improving the performance of copper-plated silicon heterojunction solar cells with the goal of mass production within Australia. Several of his achievements at SunDrive include a world record silicon solar cell efficiency on an M6 commercial-sized wafer at 25.54% in 2021 followed by 25.94% in an low-indium silicon heterojunction device and up to 26.41% in 2022.. 

Daniel received his bachelor in Photovoltaics and Solar Energy Engineering (1st Class Honours) at UNSW in 2016. In 2022, he was awarded a Ph.D. in photovoltaics engineering from UNSW with his thesis entitled "Elucidating the mechanism behind light- and elevated temperature-induced degradation in silicon solar cells". He was later awarded a postdoctoral fellowship with the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP), working on investigating various hydrogen-induced instabilities in tunnel-oxide polysilicon contact (TOPCon) solar cells.

Daniel has expertise within a variety of different topic areas including silicon heterojunction solar cells, defect engineering and the elimination of light-induced degradation in silicon, TOPCon solar cells, potential induced degradation, and also has an interest in perovskite-based tandem photovoltaic devices.