Page 181 - ISES SWC50

Stuart Wenham (1957-2017)
Country: Australia
Year Started Research: 1982
Title of Research: The buried contact solar cell
University: University of NSW
Still Active in Research: No

Stuart invented the buried contact solar cell as part of his PhD Thesis. It was commercialised by BP solar as the
‘Saturn’ technology and sold all over the world including one of the world’s MW scale power plants (in Toledo
Spain). The buried contact solar cell was awarded the CSIRO Medal for research of commercial significance in
1992 and judged one of the “Top 100 Australian inventions of the 20th century” by the Academy of Technology
and Engineering in 2001. He worked in the team at UNSW that developed the world’s first 20% efficient cell
and the 25% efficiency PERL cell, thereby holding world efficiency cell records almost continuously for decades.
Jointly with Professor Green, Stuart was awarded the Australia Prize for Science and Technology in 1999. He also
invented or co-invented eight classes of solar cell technologies that have been licensed to manufacturers around
the world. Stuart’s laser doping, plating and hydrogenation technologies that were commercialised as ‘Pluto’ by
Suntech Power (with CEO Zhengrong Shi and Stuart as CTO) led to a world record 20.3% efficient commercial
cell. For his contribution to research, innovation and commercial development, he won countless awards including
the Clunies Ross Award, William Cherry Award and an Australian centenary medal. In 2014 he was awarded the
AF Harvey Engineering Prize for his advanced hydrogenation technology controlling the charge state of hydrogen
to passivate defects allowing the use of cheaper silicon wafers and preventing cell degradation. At the time of his
passing in 2017, he was as active as ever in the research space, with around a dozen patents in the pipeline and
many millions in grant funding awarded to progress their development.

Roberto Zilles
Country: Brazil
Year Started Research: 1985
Title of Research: Comparative experimental study on flat-plate solar
collectors with solar radiation and solar simulator
University: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Still Active in Research: Yes

Roberto Zilles´ RE research activities started in 1985 and were associated with the Master Degree Program
in Mechanical Engineering of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The first research was about
solar flat-plate solar collector efficiency, entitled “Thermal-efficiency of flat-plate solar collectors using outdoor
and indoor measurements with a solar simulator”, and the results established a correlation between the two test
procedures and allowed the use of indoor measurements to reduce the time to evaluate the performance of flat-
plate solar collectors. In 1987 he started his studies on mismatch losses in PV arrays that resulted in an analytical
model for mismatch losses in PV arrays. In 1993 he concluded his doctor thesis at the Solar Energy Institute of the
Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain, and in 1994 he started his research activities on PV system applications
at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, where he founded the Laboratory of Photovoltaic Systems. Since then he has
been the coordinator of the research activities of this laboratory, and has been recently appointed Director of the
Institute of Environment and Energy of the University of São Paulo.

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