III-V solar start-up earns £1.35 million seed
Quantasol has entered the GaAs solar cell race currently led by Emcore and Spectrolab, with a kick-start of £1.35 million ($2.7 m) in seed funding.
The money will be used to develop the Richmond, UK, company's technology, which it is calling quantum well photovoltaic, or QWPV, cells.
“Our unique strain-balanced quantum well technology enables us to extend the spectral range of a single junction cell and optimize a tandem cell without introducing any dislocations,” said Keith Barnham, of Imperial College London, founder and director of Quantasol.
“We have fewer tunnel junctions than the Emcore/Spectrolab triple-junction cells, giving better device yield, enhanced lifetime and the ability to optimize for the spectral output of a particular concentrator system.”
GaAs-based solar cells currently hold the energy conversion efficiency record of 27.8% for single-junction devices, and Barnham says Quantasol's devices are close to this, achieving 27% at 320-fold concentration.
Epitaxy and fabrication are currently outsourced to UK-based partners, says the company s CEO, Kevin Arthur, with the aim of prototyping single-junction and tandem cells for three or four lead customers.
By combining Quantasol s high efficiency QWPV cells with low-cost, high-concentration systems from its partners, Barnham anticipates a cost effective final solar solution.
Quantasol was formed in 2006, based on research from Barnham, Massimo Mazzer of the National Research Council of Italy, and John Roberts at the University of Sheffield.
The £1.35 million seed deal included contributions by spin-out incubator funds from Imperial and Sheffield, and investment groups Numis Securities, Netscientific and Low Carbon Accelerator.
Barnham and Mazzer have advocated the use of solar as a preferential means of power to renewing end-of-life nuclear energy plants.
Commenting in the British political magazine, The New Statesman, Barnham and Mazzer wrote, “If the UK implemented similar policies on photovoltaics to Germany, then by 2020 PV would have installed as much power as the current nuclear contribution.”
