Within the specific search scope combining TOPCon terminology with TCAD, device simulation, or numerical modeling language and restricted to the relevant semiconductor and computational-modeling IPC classes, exactly one published patent family is returned, covering the 2015–2026 window. This is a narrow, deliberately filtered result rather than a count of all TOPCon-related patents. Broader searches on TOPCon device architecture alone return a much larger set, because most of that activity is not framed in simulation-specific claim language.

The single documented assignee in this search scope is Georgia Tech Research Corporation, via its PCT filing WO2023235390A3 on a rear-junction bifacial poly-Si/SiOx passivated contact solar cell. The filing focuses on device architecture and manufacturing method claims — laser etching and screen printing for contact patterning — rather than a standalone simulation or software claim. No other assignee appears in this exact intersection of terms.

Most TCAD and process-simulation work for TOPCon cells is published in academic and conference literature or kept as internal process know-how rather than filed as a patent claim in this specific vocabulary. Simulation results typically support a device or manufacturing claim rather than becoming the claim itself, so they show up as description text, not as records classified under computational-modeling IPC codes like G06F30. A search built around device claims alone would return a substantially larger dataset.

The filing covers a rear-junction bifacial TOPCon solar cell with tunnel-oxide passivated contacts on both sides, methods for patterning that contact stack using laser etching and screen printing, and a tandem-cell configuration that uses the TOPCon device as a bottom cell. It also specifies a front-side design where the TOPCon region sits under roughly 5% metal-grid coverage, with the remaining 95% of the front surface left as an undiffused wafer passivated with Al2O3/SiN dielectric. Anyone designing a bifacial TOPCon process with this specific front-side split should review the claim scope directly.

Not based on this search scope — with a single family on record and a peak year of one filing in 2023, this specific intersection of TOPCon and simulation terminology is essentially unclaimed rather than crowded. That does not mean the broader TOPCon device space is open; general TOPCon architecture and process patents are filed heavily by cell manufacturers elsewhere. It means the narrow claim combination of simulation/TCAD language with TOPCon device classes has almost no prior art to design around, though that could reflect a search-scope limitation rather than true white space.