Who’s working on solar cells?
Silicon still makes most solar panels, and the next gains come from perovskites, tandems stacked on silicon, thin films such as CdTe and CIGS, and better silicon cell designs; the open problems are stability, efficiency at scale and cost. This page shows how much of that work the Helikon Research Graph holds and gives you a problem statement to run in Partner Search.
What the Helikon Research Graph holds on solar cells
34,000+
researchers
177,000+
publications
8,400+
U.S. patents
Counts from the Helikon Research Graph on 9 October 2026; rounded down. Each figure is counted on its own, so they are not added together.
How these were counted
- Publications: papers whose title, author names or research topics match the keyword set below, the same text the Literature search reads.
- U.S. patents: granted U.S. patents whose text matches the keyword set and that carry at least one of these CPC subclasses: H10K, H10F, H01L, H02S, Y02E. That is the Patents search with the CPC subclass field set.
- Researchers: people in the graph who authored a matching publication or are named inventors on a matching patent.
- Keyword set:
"solar cell" OR "photovoltaic cell" OR "photovoltaic device" OR "photovoltaic module" OR "solar module" OR "thin-film solar" OR "cadmium telluride" OR "CdTe" OR "CIGS" OR "copper indium gallium selenide" OR "organic photovoltaic" OR "perovskite solar cell" OR "perovskite photovoltaic" OR "perovskite tandem" OR "halide perovskite" OR "tandem solar" OR "silicon heterojunction" OR "TOPCon" OR "passivated contact" OR "bifacial"
Try it on a real problem
Partner Search ranks researchers against a problem statement by what their publications, patents and profiles say. This one is ready to run; edit it to fit your project.
Our perovskite-silicon tandem cells lose about a tenth of their efficiency within 500 hours at 85 °C under illumination. Looking for a group with interface passivation or encapsulation chemistry and damp-heat test capacity.Run this in Partner Search
Who’s working on this
Chemistry, materials science, physics and electrical engineering groups at universities, national laboratory photovoltaics programs, and company teams in cell and module manufacturing, thin films, space power, materials and deposition equipment.
Universities and research labs
Ranked by researchers with work in this area, researchers whose main topic it is, and the U.S. patents they own.
- National Laboratory of the Rockies
141 researchers · 108 U.S. patents
- Georgia Institute of Technology
441 researchers · 14 U.S. patents
- University of Michigan
264 researchers · 64 U.S. patents
- North Carolina State University
304 researchers · 14 U.S. patents
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
160 researchers · 70 U.S. patents
- Pennsylvania State University
298 researchers · 4 U.S. patents
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
193 researchers · 9 U.S. patents
- Stanford University
119 researchers · 29 U.S. patents
Companies
Ranked by the U.S. patents they own in this area and the researchers who work on it.
- IBM
107 researchers · 416 U.S. patents
- Applied Materials
92 researchers · 84 U.S. patents
- Boeing
21 researchers · 124 U.S. patents
- DuPont
32 researchers · 98 U.S. patents
- GlobalFoundries
105 researchers · 14 U.S. patents
- First Solar
16 researchers · 101 U.S. patents
- SolAero Technologies
6 researchers · 128 U.S. patents
- Dow Chemical
41 researchers · 38 U.S. patents
Specialists
Organizations where at least a quarter of their researchers work in this area.
- MicroLink Devices
5 researchers · 13 U.S. patents
- SunEdison
7 researchers
- ASM International
8 researchers
- Light Prescriptions Innovators
7 researchers · 5 U.S. patents
- Axcelis Technologies
9 researchers
- Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems · Germany
57 researchers
- Azur Space Solar Power · Germany
6 researchers · 29 U.S. patents
- Heliatek · Germany
8 researchers · 4 U.S. patents
From the Helikon Research Graph on 9 October 2026. Researchers are people at the organization who authored a matching publication or are named inventors on a matching patent; patents are matching U.S. patents the organization owns. Each name opens the organization’s page on Helikon Labs.
More technology areas
- Additive manufacturing
- Energy storage
- Drug delivery
- Biomanufacturing
- PFAS detection and replacement
- Antimicrobial resistance
- Clean hydrogen
- Chemically recyclable plastics
- Separation membranes
- Semiconductor fab and packaging
- Carbon capture and conversion
- Robotics
- Autonomous vehicles
Search the whole graph on the Free plan.