NexWafe GmbH, a spinoff from the Fraunhofer ISE, has completed a Euro 6 million Series A financing. The round was led by the Swiss-based Private Equity firm Lynwood (Schweiz) AG and will be used for the commercialization of the EpiWafer technology.
“NexWafe's technology will be instrumental in the silicon wafer business serving the PV industry which is continuously searching for new ways to cut overall cost of high efficiency Silicon PV modules,†said Marina Groenberg, CEO of Lynwood. “With its EpiWafer technology the NexWafe team will implement a disruptive manufacturing process that will enable to drastically reduce the cost to manufacture high efficiency Silicon wafers.â€
“We are very happy to have Lynwood supporting us into the next phase of commercialization†said Dr. Stefan Reber, co-founder and CEO of NexWafe. “Our unique technology enables us to fabricate monocrystalline wafers directly from chlorosilane with an extremely low energy and material usage. In a first phase NexWafe will fabricate in its technical center EpiWafers for highly efficient solar cells to be fully qualified with selected partners from solar cell and module manufacturing.â€
NexWafe will supply to solar cell producers high quality monocrystalline wafers fully compatible with common cell and module fabrication processes at competitive price. In NexWafe's disruptive EpiWafer process, a crystalline silicon layer is epitaxially deposited on a seed wafer and subsequently detached to produce a freestanding wafer. NexWafe GmbH is headquartered in Freiburg, Germany.
