Spire Corp. announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Spire Semiconductor, LLC, has been awarded an 18-month, $3,706,359 program by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), consisting of $2,960,850 in government funding and a $745,509 cost share. Under the contract, Spire Semiconductor will develop next-generation manufacturing technology to produce 42% efficient III-V three junction tandem concentrator solar cells.
Edward D. Gagnon, General Manager of Spire Semiconductor, stated, "We are pleased that NREL selected Spire to participate in this highly competitive Photovoltaic (PV) Technology Incubator program, whose goal is to shorten the timeline for companies to transition prototype and pre-commercial PV technologies into pilot and full-scale manufacture. Our new growth technique has the potential for producing concentrator cells with record-level efficiencies with lower manufacturing costs and higher reliability."
Roger G. Little, Chairman and CEO of Spire Corp., added, "Spire has been involved in the solar energy market for over 25 years. 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. We plan to offer our new series of triple junction "Triathlon" concentrator solar cells to system integrators around the world."
