News

6 April 2009

 

Spire awarded $3.7m NREL program to develop 42%-efficient CPVs

Spire Corp of Bedford, MA, USA, which provides turnkey production lines and capital equipment for manufacturing photovoltaic modules, cells and wafers, says that its epiwafer foundry subsidiary Spire Semiconductor LLC has been awarded an 18-month, $3.7m program by the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), consisting of $2.96m in government funding and a $745,000 cost share.

Under the contract, Spire Semiconductor of Hudson, NH, USA aims to develop next-generation manufacturing technology to produce III-V triple-junction tandem concentrator solar cells with an efficiency of 42% by growing differentiated bi-facial cells on a gallium arsenide substrate. This approach should allow Spire to optimize the optical properties of the device layers to better match the solar spectrum, the firm says.

The goal of the Photovoltaic (PV) Technology Incubator program is to shorten the timeline for companies to transition prototype and pre-commercial PV technologies into pilot and full-scale manufacture, says Spire Semiconductor's general manager Edward D. Gagnon. “Our new growth technique has the potential for producing concentrator cells with record-level efficiencies with lower manufacturing costs and higher reliability,” he reckons.

“Spire has been involved in the solar energy market for over 25 years,” says Spire Corp’s chairman & CEO Roger G. Little. “Development of this cell will put us in an excellent position to capitalize on the growing market opportunity for custom gallium arsenide (GaAs) based solar cells for concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems. Our Spire Semiconductor facility has state-of-the-art capabilities for producing these devices,” he adds. “We plan to offer our new series of triple-junction Triathlon concentrator solar cells to system integrators around the world.”

See related item:

Spire providing custom CPV cell design and production

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