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The Finnish cleantech company, Beneq, has newly received a combined €9 million investment from Finnish Industry Investment, Via Venture Partners and other private investors. Beneq is known as a supplier of production and research equipment for nano-scale thin-film coatings and developed the nAERO aerosol-assisted process. nAero is a deposition method that allows for production of low-haze and high-haze transparent conductive oxide (TCO) coatings for in-line and off-line coated products. The company is presently shifting from its piloting to industrial production phase.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has chosen Silicon Solar Solutions as the recipient of a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant. The SBIR grant will allow Silicon Solar Solutions to further develop their TAIC process for the creation of thin-film in solar cells. The company’s TAIC process develops a thin-film of large-grain polysilicon by crystallizing amorphous silicon. Silicon Solar Solutions claims that this allows for the grains to be created not only 90 times bigger than more customary methods, but in a more efficient time frame as well.
Magnolia Solar to team with Rensselaer Polytechnic to incorporate advanced nanostructured-based coatings developed for light-emitting diodes into high-efficiency thin-film solar cell applications.
Unidym, a subsidiary of Arrowhead Research, and Samsung Electronics have joined forces for an IP cooperation and license agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Unidym licenses Samsung patents for CNT materials, including fundamental patents on CNT compositions of matter, synthesis of CNTs, processing CNTs, ink formulations, and transparent conductive films.
Suss MicroTec and Rolith have come together to use Rolith’s disruptive nanolithography method in order to develop and construct nanostructuring equipment. Rolith’s nanolithography technology uses near-field optical lithography with cylindrically shaped rolling masks. Sub-wavelength resolution is reached by a phase-interference effect or plasmonic enhancement printing structures. Rolith advises that a continued operation yields a high throughput with low cost production.
The FlexTech Alliance has awarded a grant to Cambridge NanoTech to develop a high-speed atomic layer deposition (ALD) system. When completed, the system will enable the manufacture of large-area and flexible substrates for use in organic electronics including solar cells. The high-speed ALD system is targeted to operate at the high volumes necessary for commercial roll-to-roll practices.
Research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven and Los Alamos national laboratories has identified transparent thin films that are claimed to be able to absorb light and produce an electric charge over a comparably large area. The material has been described in the journal, Chemistry of Materials, by scientists from the laboratory as having the potential ability to be used in the production of transparent solar panels or windows, which would take in the solar energy and convert it to usable electricity.
After Nanoco successfully created and supplied a tailored solar ink under its agreement with Tokyo Electron, Tokyo Electron issued an additional, yet undisclosed, payment to Nanoco. The solar ink has been used to make a nanomaterial thin film for the production of solar cells and is one step in the nine-month development phase of the agreement between the two companies to improve solar power efficiency.
Solar Frontier and IBM have agreed to collaborate on the joint development of copper-zinc-tin-sulfur thin-film photovoltaics technology. IBM, which said in February that it had achieved 9.6% conversion efficiencies on champion cells made with the earth-abundant materials, also recently announced that it has partnered with DelSolar to work on CZTS.
