15 March 2012

Soitec finalizes acquisition of Soitec Solar GmbH

Soitec of Bernin, France, which makes engineered substrates including silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers (as well as III-V epiwafers through its Picogiga International division), has finalized its acquisition of 100% of Soitec Solar GmbH, which was spun off from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) of Freiburg, Germany in 2005 as Concentrix Solar GmbH. Soitec exercised its rights over the remaining shares of Soitec Solar in compliance with the terms of its acquisition agreement signed in December 2009.

Soitec says that the announcement validates its strategy in the solar power plant market, and confirms its trust in Soitec Solar’s founders and teams, as well in its partners, who are fully associated with the firm’s first successes in this new activity.

As part of their collaboration over the past two years in the context of a technical alliance concerning the development of solar cells and CPV systems, Soitec and the Fraunhofer ISE are developing a new generation of photovoltaic cells. The new ‘Smart Cell’ is based on Soitec technologies that should enable CPV system efficiencies to be increased significantly beyond current capabilities, it is reckoned.

“Soitec Solar GmbH enables us to apply our materials engineering expertise to the development of high-performance photovoltaic systems at a competitive cost,” says Soitec’s president & CEO André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé. “Moreover, the synergies that we have in this field with our partners including Fraunhofer ISE and CEA-Leti are contributing to the rapid deployment of our innovations. These partnerships illustrate the advantages of public-private research collaboration to promote innovations as rapidly as possible by industrializing them,” he adds.

“We are very satisfied with the strategic and technical opportunities resulting from our alliance with Soitec, especially thanks to the pooled competencies and technologies of our teams,” says Concentrix Solar GmbH’s CEO & founder Hansjoerg Lerchenmueller. “Soitec’s ability to industrialize a disruptive technology and produce cost-competitive CPV systems has led to accelerated growth in our solar activities on an international scale,” he concludes.

Tags: Soitec Solar Concentrix CPV

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