Dr Aihua Wang

Dr Aihua Wang landscape

Dr Aihua Wang received her PhD from solar cells group at the School of Electrical Engineering, the University of New South Wales, Australia in 1992. She then stayed at UNSW and continued her research in solar cells as a project scientist until 2006.

During her research in UNSW, Dr Wang with her husband, Dr Jianhua Zhao, developed the high efficiency c-Si PERC (Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell) and PERL (Passivated Emitter, Rear Locally-diffused) cell structures, and demonstrated the world record of 25% energy conversion efficiency in 1999.

In 2004, Dr Wang joined China Sunergy (Nanjing) Co. as a co-founder and the head for research at the company. China Sunergy is one of the largest solar companies in China, and once had annual revenue of over one billion US dollars.

Dr Wang and her husband, Dr Jianhua Zhao were awarded the Advance Global Australian Award (2013) and Australia in the Asian Century Award (2013).

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The 2023 QEPrize is awarded to Professor Martin Green, Professor Andrew Blakers, Dr Aihua Wang & Dr Jianhua Zhao

The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering has been awarded for the invention and development of Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell (PERC) solar photovoltaic technology.