Three presentation awards for ACAP researchers at Bangkok's PVSEC-36

Two ACAP researchers, Dr Zhongshu Yang (ANU) and Dr Brendan Wright (UNSW), were recognised with prestigious Best Oral Presentation (non-student) awards at the 36th International Photovoltaic Science and Engineering Conference (PVSEC-36), held in Thailand in November, one of the world’s leading forums for photovoltaic research. And, Lizhi Sun (UNSW) received the Best Student Oral Presentation Award for work on cost-effective self-doping in back-contact silicon solar cells.

Dr Brendan Wright with his award.

Dr Wright, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Applied Data Engineering, was honoured for his presentation, “Developing an open-access dataset of solar cell luminescence images using generative modelling.” His work uses advanced AI to generate realistic solar cell images, offering a powerful resource for global fault-detection research. By overcoming the lack of diverse, high-quality luminescence data—which has long held back machine-learning approaches—Wright’s project will enable researchers worldwide to accelerate innovation in quality control and diagnostics.

ANU postdoctoral researcher Dr Zhongshu Yang received the Best Oral Presentation Award for his talk on the stability of laser-enhanced contacts in TOPCon solar cells. His research explores how an additional light-annealing step unexpectedly increases series resistance, drawing on a combination of electrical, optical, and materials-analysis techniques.

Dr Zhongshu Yang giving his award winning presentation.

“Laser-enhanced contacts are a promising pathway for high-efficiency industrial TOPCon cells, but their reliability isn’t yet fully understood,” Dr Yang explained. “Our results show why resistance instability appears – and how to prevent it.”

His findings offer a practical recommendation to industry: the laser-enhanced contact step should be placed at the end of the TOPCon fabrication sequence to ensure stable, high-performance contacts.

“This helps avoid unexpected efficiency losses and supports more reliable, manufacturable high-efficiency cell designs,” he said.

Congratulations to the winners and all ACAP supported presenters at PVSEC-36!