Perovskite-Silicon Tandem Light Management Patents: Leaders & Gaps 2026
- Filing peaked in 2018 at 9 records and has not returned to that level since, despite tandem cells moving toward pilot production — a sign the core texturing claims were staked out early.
- Europe dominates the docket with 9 of the tracked filings routed through the EPO versus 3 in the US, meaning freedom-to-operate work should start with European file histories, not USPTO ones.
- Only one strong co-filing pair exists between two US universities, and every top assignee shows zero filings in the latest tracked year — the field reads as lightly contested rather than settled.
What this landscape covers
This review tracks patent families at the intersection of monolithic perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells and the light management techniques used to get photons efficiently into both sub-cells: textured silicon front surfaces, spectral splitting, and photon management coatings. The search is scoped to IPC classes covering semiconductor light-trapping structures and cell architecture (H01L31/0236, H01L31/0216, H01L31/054), narrowed by title/claim language specific to tandem and monolithic constructions.
Sixteen published families sit inside this scope as of the mid-2026 data cut-off. That is a small, addressable set: every family in it can be read individually rather than sampled, which matters more here than in crowded fields where ranking noise dominates.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 16-family set: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the families actually sit in alongside the core semiconductor classification.
A 2018 peak that has not repeated
Filings ran to 0 in 2017, climbed to a peak of 9 in 2018, then fell back — the 2022 midpoint sits at just 1 family. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the last one or two years understate true activity, but the multi-year decline from the 2018 peak predates that lag and looks real.
Concentrated in semiconductor devices, with an organic-electronics overlap
All 16 families classify under H01L (semiconductor devices), as the search scope requires. Nine also carry an H10K (organic semiconductor / OLED-derived) classification, pointing to shared photon-management and layer-stack techniques crossing over from organic optoelectronics. A single family touches H01G (capacitors), likely incidental to an integrated device claim.
Shares are the percentage of the 16 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Perovskite-Silicon Tandem Solar Cell Light Management with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell light management and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited families in this set
Method for producing perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells (WO2023169631A1)
The filing describes a front-side inverted-pyramid texture etched into a silicon wafer — base edge length 1.5 to 6 micrometres, pyramid depth 1 to 4 micrometres, spacing 1.5 to 6 micrometres — sized specifically so a perovskite layer can be applied conformally over the structure by spin coating.Machine-translated from the German-language original filing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20200212243A1 | Method for manufacturing perovskite silicon tandem solar cell | 30 |
| 2 | WO2021030491A1 | Perovskite/silicon tandem photovoltaic device | 11 |
| 3 | US20220344106A1 | Perovskite/silicon tandem photovoltaic device | 6 |
| 4 | EP3633736A1 | Perovskite silicon tandem solar cell and manufacturing method | 6 |
| 5 | WO2023169631A1 | Method for producing perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells | 1 |
Citation counts inside this corpus skew toward older filings and are a signal of influence within the searched set, not a ranking of current technical importance.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (5 of 5 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about this field
Three readings of the same dataset: filing momentum, geography, and the citation record.
Activity front-loaded, then flat
The bulk of the documented claim activity in this specific texturing-and-photon-management niche happened around 2018. Filing since then has been thin rather than rising, even as tandem cell commercialisation efforts have accelerated industry-wide.
Europe is the primary filing venue
Nearly two-thirds of tracked filings went through the EPO, with the US, WIPO/PCT, Austria and India making up the remainder. A freedom-to-operate check anchored only on US grants would miss the majority of the relevant prior art here.
One family carries most of the citation weight
The most-cited record in this set is cited roughly three times more than the next-highest. That gap suggests one early manufacturing-method filing anchors much of the downstream prior-art discussion in this niche.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell light management, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claims
The assignee set is small and university-heavy, with a single notable co-filing relationship and no standout recent-year filer.
A university pairing anchors the strongest cluster
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Arizona Board of Regents (representing the University of Arizona) co-file as a pair across 5 families — the single strongest collaborative link in this landscape, and larger than any other assignee's solo output.
No assignee is actively pressing claims right now
Every one of the leading named assignees — the two universities, LG Electronics, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, and JA Solar — shows zero filings in the latest tracked year. That is consistent with the broader flat-to-declining trend and suggests the space is between filing cycles rather than being actively contested.
Academic and industrial assignees sit side by side
The named-assignee set mixes two US research universities with a German public research institute (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin) and two commercial solar manufacturers (LG Electronics, JA Solar). No single organisation dominates the family count outright.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| LG Electronics | 0 | — |
| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 0 | — |
| Arizona Board of Regents (on behalf of the University of Arizona) | 0 | — |
| Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH | 0 | — |
| JA Solar Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this
This 16-family set is small enough to read in full, but that also means conclusions should be checked against adjacent, more broadly scoped searches before being used to make filing decisions.
Check freedom-to-operate against EPO filings first
With 9 of 16 families routed through the EPO against 3 in the US, any clearance opinion built solely on US prior art will miss most of the relevant claim scope in this niche.
Explore in EurekaWatch for a publication-lag correction
Every leading assignee shows zero filings in the latest tracked year, but publication lags filing by roughly 18 months — re-run this search in 12 months before concluding the field has gone quiet.
Track this landscape in EurekaProbe the under-claimed texturing variants
Spectral splitting layers and photon-recycling structures at the tandem interface show thin documented activity relative to the core texturing claims — a candidate area for a first-mover filing.
Draft a claim scope in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The most-cited family in this set is US20200212243A1, a manufacturing-method filing cited 30 times within this corpus, well ahead of the next-highest cited family. Beyond that single anchor filing, the assignee base is split between two US research universities that co-file heavily together, a German public research institute (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin), and commercial solar manufacturers including LG Electronics and JA Solar. No single organisation holds a dominant share of the 16 tracked families, so this is not a field with one clear gatekeeper.
Filing in this specific niche — light trapping and photon management claims layered onto monolithic tandem architecture — peaked at 9 records in 2018 and dropped to just 1 by the 2022 midpoint, even as the broader tandem solar field has grown. That likely reflects early claim staking on the core texturing geometries rather than declining interest: once the inverted-pyramid and related structures were filed, follow-on filers had less open claim space to work with. The most recent one to two years are also understated because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so a partial rebound may still be in the pipeline.
Europe, specifically the EPO, which accounts for 9 of the 16 tracked families — nearly double the US total of 3. Two further families were filed via the WIPO/PCT route, indicating some applicants sought multi-jurisdiction coverage. A clearance search that only checks US grants and applications will miss the majority of relevant prior art in this niche.
It describes a method for producing perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells by etching a specific inverted-pyramid texture into the front side of a silicon wafer, with base edge lengths of 1.5 to 6 micrometres, pyramid depths of 1 to 4 micrometres, and spacing of 1.5 to 6 micrometres. The stated purpose of these dimensional ranges is to allow a perovskite layer to be applied conformally over the textured surface by spin coating. Anyone developing a spin-coated perovskite top cell on textured silicon in that dimensional window should read this filing's full claim set closely before finalising a process design.
Based on the documented filings, spectral splitting layers between sub-cells and photon-recycling structures at the tandem interface show thinner activity than the core silicon texturing claims. Anti-reflective coatings tuned specifically to tandem-relevant spectral bands, and textured silicon surfaces adapted for solution-processed (rather than vacuum-deposited) top cells, are also lightly represented in this 16-family set. These are reasonable starting points for a first claim, though a broader search outside this narrow IPC scope should confirm the gap before committing to a filing strategy.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.