BOSTON--Solasta, a quiet Boston-area company, says it's a few steps ahead of the many researchers trying to design flexible solar cells using nanotechnology.
The company is now in the process of seeking a Series B round of venture capital in the range of $20 million with a target of starting production by the end of next year, said chief technology officer and co-founder Michael Naughton here on Friday.
An array of carbon nanotubes that next-generation solar companies plan to use on solar cells.
(Credit: Solasta )Solasta was spun out of Boston College and raised a $6 million Series A round in 2006 from venture capital company Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in a deal led by famed technologist Bill Joy. It has also received grants from the Department of Energy.
There are a number of researchers developing next-generation photovoltaic materials using nanoscale cylinders called carbon nanotubes. The idea is to create very thin solar cells with these tiny wires in order to lower the manufacturing cost.
Solasta is developing a "platform" for putting these nanowires onto different solar cell materials, said Naughton who presented at the Fifth Annual Conference on Clean Energy. The goal is to create a method where these solar cells can be produced with high-volume processes, such as roll-to-roll manufacturing, to keep the costs down.
The company has done initial testing with amorphous silicon, but also plans to test its process with thin-film materials cadmium telluride and CIGS, a combination of copper, indium, gallium, and selenide, Naughton said.
He said Solasta is developing a process, which it calls "nanocoax," to make nanowires that optimize both light capture and the conductivity of electricity. "It's a little bit like a coaxial cable with semiconductors," he said. For more on Solasta, see here.
A company has been formed to commercialize the thermoelectric research that CNET News.com wrote about on Thursday.
The CEO of GMZ Energy, Mike Clary, told VentureBeat that the company has received seed funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and described the Newton, Mass.-based start-up's plans.
Researchers at Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of technology have found a way to more efficiently convert electricity from heat, a breakthrough they claim could make a wide range of products more energy-efficient.
The thermoelectric effect has been understood for a long time, but the researchers were able to use nanotechnology to make the process of generating electricity from heat far more efficient.
Clary said that the company's first product is a material that can withstand temperatures of about 400 degrees Fahrenheit used in a range of industrial products.
Cars that are partly powered from the heat of their exhaust systems are a good application of the technology, but the company intends to first target utility-scale power plants, which give off a great deal of waste heat, Clary told VentureBeat.
The technology researchers included Boston College physicist Zhifeng Ren, MIT professor of mechanical engineering Gang Chen, and famed nanotechnology MIT researcher Mildred Dresselhaus.
Update 2:55 p.m. Pacific: A spokesperson for GMZ Energy confirmed Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers invested in the company in April 2007.
IBM and Saudi Arabia's national research and development organization have created a joint nanotechnology lab to develop new technologies in solar power, seawater desalination, and recyclable materials.
An agreement to create the Nanotechnology Centre of Excellence, established by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology and IBM Research, was signed last week in a ceremony in Riyadh.
The lab is one of several indicators that oil-rich Middle East nations are moving rapidly into clean tech.
The oil minister of Saudi Arabia, Ali al-Nuaimi, told the French oil newsletter Petrostrategies that "one of the most important sources of energy to look at and to develop is solar energy," according to an AFP report.
Last November, OPEC members created a $750 million fund to do research on carbon capture and storage.
And the head of the Masdar Clean Tech Fund, based in Abu Dhabi, last month was named "Cleantech leader of the year," at last week's Cleantech Forum. The fund is behind Masdar City, which is being called the first sustainable city.
For IBM, the joint nanotechnology lab is part of the company's Big Green Innovations initiative to develop environmental technology.
Even with incremental advances in solar cell efficiency, burning fossil fuels is still a cheaper way to make electricity.
The National Science Foundation on Thursday handed out a $100,000 grant to a start-up called Bloo Solar that wants to use nanotechnology to vastly improve solar cell output and catch up traditional power sources.
Bloo has yet to release its product or raise any other funding apart from the NSF grant. But it claims that its design will result in electricity that is cheaper than the power derived from fossil fuels.
Researchers and commercial companies like Nanosolar are using nanotechnology, where materials are manipulated on a microscopic level, to improve cell efficiency and lower manufacturing costs.
Right now, the efficiency of converting light to electricity in typical silicon rooftop panels is in the range of 15 percent to 20 percent. Using lenses to concentrate light, researchers have topped 40 percent on the most expensive solar cell material. Thin-film cells, which use different materials, are around 10 percent efficiency and lower, although lower manufacturing costs can make them competitive with silicon cells.
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