Recently, Liu Zhengxin, a well-known expert in the field of solar cell, signed a cooperative research agreement with Changzhou Trina Solar Energy Co., Ltd. to research thin film silicon and crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cell technology, creating a new model of institute-enterprise cooperation.

After 17 years of studying and working in Japan, Liu came back to China in his forties as a 2011 member of the Thousand Talents Plan, becoming a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology. Two years later, Liu led his team to increase the light-to-electricity conversion rate of solar cells from 18 percent to 21 percent, resulting in an integrated cost cut of 10 percent.

To build China's solar energy R&D to meet world-class standards and match its global production capabilities, Liu set up a solar cell R&D laboratory in the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology's Jiading Zone in 2011, hoping to give China a new energy institute comparable to the world-renowned University of New South Wales in Australia, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US or the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan.

"Horizontal cooperation with enterprises can not only help us obtain financial support and technical assistance, but also provide a good export channel for technology, improving the practicality of technology and R&D efficiency," according to Liu.

Liu Zhengxin has signed agreements with 15 enterprises, raising total research funding of about 60 million yuan, with about 1 million per capita. He is still currently pursuing solar energy research, seeking to fulfill even larger ambitions.