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Coherent, Crosslink Capital and Vulcan Capital have joined veteran investors Polaris Venture Partners and Harris & Harris in the series B financing round for SiOnyx. The series closed at US$12.5 million and resulted in no changes to SiOnyx’s board of directors. The companies funding is going towards the commercialization of its new semiconductor processing technique, which the company claims is an advancement for smaller, cheaper, high-performing silicon photonic devices.
Iosil Energy has leased a 30,700 square foot facility from Meritex in Groveport, Ohio, as the location for its pilot manufacturing of high purity polysilicon.
Analyst group NanoMarkets released a new report, which cites that new materials, such as metal foils, plastics, ceramics and composites, will show an increase in their importance for the substrate and encapsulation materials used for thin-film PV (TFPV). NanoMarkets claims that the materials will be used more frequently as the need to support flexible PV and the growth of flexible products for BIPV continues to accelerate. As a result, the TFPV market has the potential to reach US$1.3 billion by 2015 and US$1.8 billion by 2017.
Newly-developed rotary target bonding technology will be employed as part of a €30 million investment by Umicore to expand production of rotary sputtering targets needed for thin-film PV deposition processes. The capacity expansions are to take place at all three of Umicore’s existing target manufacturing facilities based in Providence, RI, Balzers, Europe and Hsinchu, Taiwan.
GCL-Poly has established a long-term strategic partnership with Chinese company Hareon Solar Technology, in which GCL’s solar energy technology subsidiary will supply silicon wafers worth RMB20.8 billion (US$3.06 billion) to the vertically integrated photovoltaics manufacturer’s cell and module operations in Jiangsu province over the next three years, beginning in January 2011. A price adjustment mechanism has also been included in the contract, the companies said.
High-purity materials supplier 5N Plus has signed a long-term supply agreement with cadmium-telluride thin-film module producer Abound Solar. Under the terms of the deal, 5N Plus will provide CdTe compounds to be used in the manufacturing of Abound’s PV panels.
Polysilicon, wafers and solar module prices all declined severely in 2009, according to a new report from iSuppli. On average, crystalline module prices dropped 37.8%, solar wafer prices fell by 50%, and polysilicon prices declined by 80%.
After significant polysilicon and wafer price declines in 2009, MEMC executives have become more upbeat about demand and price stability entering the first quarter of 2010 and beyond. In a conference call to discuss fourth quarter results, the company noted that capacity utilization of silicon wafer production was at approximately 80%, with a demand recovery underway in the semiconductor industry, enabling a firming in prices to that sector. In solar, price declines were said to have moderated and the company was now shipping wafers to 10 of the top 25 PV manufacturers, compared to having made shipments to only 2 solar customers at the beginning of 2009.
Possibly the largest ever dichlorosilane (DCS) redistribution process (RDR) project has been successfully completed by Dynamic Engineering (DEI) for GCL Solar’s polysilicon plant. The RDR project for GCL was designed to process 10,000 mta of DCS, which eliminates the byproduct through conversion of DCS to trichlorosilane (TCS). GCL Solar is planning to expand polysilicon production to 18,000 MTA by end of 2009 and 21,000 MTA by end of 2010.
DuPont and the U.S. Department of Energy will collaborate in a $9 million solar research program to develop ultrathin moisure-barrier material solutions for flexible thin-film photovoltaics. Some $3 million of the funding for the three-year effort comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, with DuPont contributing the remaining $6 million.
