A more than 15% increase in silver prices over the past week is adding cost pressure to the solar supply chain, as silver paste costs currently represent around 30% of total PV module costs.
Higher-silver-content pastes enable quality metallization at lower temperatures
Image: DKEM
Silver prices continued to skyrocket this week, reaching a record high of $108.17 per ounce (oz) today. Over the past seven days alone, prices increased by nearly 15%, up from $94.73/oz.
By comparison, the average silver price in 2024 was $28.27/oz. Prices stood at $31.30/oz in January 2025 and $36.11/oz in June, levels that were still considered manageable for the PV industry.
Philip Newman, managing director of UK-based market research firm Metals Focus, previously calculated that at a silver price of around $70/oz, silver would account for approximately 18% to 20% of total solar module costs. At current price levels, this share is estimated to have risen to more than 30%.

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Rising silver prices, meanwhile are pushing PV manufacturers toward copper-based metallization. Last week, China-based metallization paste supplier DK Electronic Materials highlighted this trend, revealing that a gigawatt-scale customer will adopt its high-copper paste for commercial production.
According to Radovan Kopecek, the co-founder and director of German research institute the International Solar Energy Research Center Konstanz (ISC Konstanz),  an immediate transition to copper is technically and economically feasible. “Copper screen printing can be implemented quickly, and we have received many inquiries about it,” he told pv magazine last week.
Ning Song, from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, explained that even if adopting a high-copper paste results in a small efficiency drop, the price trade-off should be acceptable to manufacturers. “That trade-off is acceptable if it does not introduce new reliability risks. Ultimately, the decision depends on how well the efficiency loss can be offset at the module and system level,” she told pv magazine.