2023 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering trophy

Trophy awarded to the winners of the 2023 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Andrew Blakers, Martin Green, Jianhua Zhao and Aihua Wang, for their work on PERC photovoltaic technology.

The 2023 Queen Elizabeth Prize acknowledged this group of engineers' work developing passivated emitter and rear solar cells (PERC) for use in solar photovoltaic technology. By reflecting back photons from sunlight into the silicon layer of each photovoltaic cell, each generates more electricity, improving the cell’s efficiency. Six years after Martin Green first sketched a PERC in 1983, the team published their ideas for others to develop. PERC technology is now in almost 90% of solar cells sold worldwide.