JinkoSolar Wins Gold in 2026 WITec Paper Award for Microcrack Stress Research, Links Findings to 30-Year Warranty

JinkoSolar took the gold medal in the 2026 WITec Paper Award for work correlating mechanical stress in solar cells with electrical performance, research the company ties directly to its 30-year full-lifecycle power warranty.

The study was carried out jointly by JinkoSolar and a research team at Soochow University in Suzhou. It pairs high-resolution Raman microscopy with photovoltage and photocurrent scanning imaging over the same cell area, letting the researchers map a defect and its electrical signature together.

Two findings anchor the paper. Tensile stress in microcrack zones correlates clearly with degradation in electrical output. Processing applied to the rear side of the cell generates local stress there, which initiates cracks and drives their propagation.

That second point matters for manufacturing sequence rather than field handling: the stress originates in the production step, not only in transport or installation loads. Conventional inspection methods generally cannot visualise defects at the sub-micron scale, and are less able still to analyse how those defects affect a device's electrical characteristics.

The award was established by Oxford Instruments to recognise scientific results achieved using its Raman technologies. Three teams were honoured in this edition, from China, Austria and France.

JinkoSolar is applying the findings across three engineering routes: optimising module structural design for impact resistance, improving the soldering process to cut microcrack risk, and using multi-cut cell technology to reduce the likelihood of hidden cracks in the module.

The commercial claim attached to that work sits with the Tiger Neo (Feihu 3) module, which the company says delivers first-year degradation below 1% and linear annual degradation of 0.35%. Those two numbers are what a 30-year power warranty has to survive, and JinkoSolar presents its position on full-lifecycle guarantees as a lead over rivals.

For buyers and lenders, degradation curves are the arithmetic behind bankability: a warranty is only as strong as the physical mechanism that explains why output holds. Microcracks are the classic gap in that argument, because they are hard to see and harder to price. A published correlation between tensile stress and measured power loss moves the discussion from statistical field data to a named mechanism at sub-micron scale.

JinkoSolar trades on the Chinese A-share market under the code 688223. The company distributed the announcement on August 12, 2026, and it was carried by Solarbe on August 13, 2026, according to Solarbe.