Tandem solar cell hits 34.76% efficiency, nearing the world record

Standard silicon solar cells are bumping against a physical ceiling: there is a limit to how much sunlight a single material can convert to electricity. Tandem cells get around this by stacking a layer of perovskite, which captures different wavelengths of light, on top of silicon, pushing efficiency higher. On December 1, 2025, pv magazine reported that Chinese manufacturer JinkoSolar had achieved a 34.76% power conversion efficiency for a perovskite-silicon tandem cell.

The result was certified by China's National PV Metric & Testing Center, an important detail because solar efficiency claims only carry weight when independently verified. JinkoSolar built the cell on its n-type TOPCon silicon technology and credited a combination of improvements: a high-efficiency bottom cell, defect passivation at the perovskite interface, new perovskite crystallization techniques and optimized charge transport.

“Tandem cells get around this by stacking a layer of perovskite, which captures different wavelengths of light, on top of silicon, pushing efficiency higher.”

It is worth being precise about what this is and is not. The 34.76% figure is not a world record; it improves on JinkoSolar's own previous mark of 34.22%, while the broader record for this cell type stands at 34.85%, set by LONGi in April 2025. In other words, this is incremental progress within a fast-moving race rather than a singular leap. For context, mainstream commercial silicon panels typically convert around 22 to 24% of sunlight, so tandems point toward meaningfully more power from the same rooftop area.

The caveats are real. These are laboratory cell results, not mass-produced modules, and perovskite's long-standing challenge has been durability: the material can degrade with heat, moisture and time far faster than silicon. Scaling small high-efficiency cells into large, stable, low-cost panels that last decades in the field remains the hard part. Even so, the steady drumbeat of certified records from multiple manufacturers suggests the industry is closing in on tandem technology that could one day deliver cheaper, more powerful solar power to homes and grids worldwide.