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Imperial Innovations Group PLC, the technology commercialisation and investment company (AIM: IVO) today announces that a £1.35 million investment round into Quantasol has closed.
As part of this round Imperial Innovations has invested £300,000 on a milestone basis in QuantaSol Limited (QuantaSol), a developer of photovoltaics (PV) - solar power technology that converts sunlight directly to electricity. The round also included significant funding from Low Carbon Accelerator, NetScientific Ltd and Numis Corporation PLC. Following the investment, Imperial Innovations owns a 24% stake in the company.
QuantaSol plans to provide solar photovoltaic cells for use in Concentrating PV (CPV) systems for the fast growing utility-scale solar power generation market. The company will use the funds to produce prototypes of its Quantum Well Photovoltaic (QWPV) cells and to engage with potential customers for these solar PV cells.
CPV systems use relatively inexpensive optics such as mirrors or lenses to concentrate or focus light from a broad collection area onto a much smaller area of active semiconductor PV cell material. Since the PV semiconductor material usually dominates the costs of a solar PV system, reducing the amount of PV material required to capture a given amount of sunlight leads to substantially lower system cost and cost per watt of output. QuantaSol’s “third generation” cells are based on Gallium arsenide (GaAs) and other III-V semiconductor materials. These materials are more expensive than silicon, which is commonly used for flat panel PV, but have more than double the photovoltaic efficiency. QuantaSol plans to manufacture single and multi-junction concentrator solar cells with efficiency levels of up to 40%.
QuantaSol was formed in 2006 and is based on the research of Professor Keith Barnham, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Senior Research Investigator in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London; Dr. Massimo Mazzer, Senior Researcher of the National Research Council of Italy; and Dr. John Roberts, Senior Research Scientist at The University of Sheffield. The company also has a strong and experienced management team in place which includes CEO Kevin Arthur who has twenty-three years of international business development and operational experience in semiconductor manufacturing companies and technology start-ups.
Following the investment, the board of Quantasol will be strengthened further with the appointment of Oliver Hemsley, CEO of Numis Corporation PLC, as a non-executive director.
Susan Searle, Chief Executive, Imperial Innovations, said, “QuantaSol’s technology is derived from strong research by a team of world-class scientists. We are keen to support them through the early stages and will continue to work with them as they develop the company and become a significant player in the solar energy market.”
Kevin Arthur, Chief Executive, QuantaSol, said, “ We are very grateful for the support that we have received from Imperial Innovations, and are looking forward to working with them and the rest of the investor group to take QuantaSol forward to become a major global supplier of 3rd generation, high efficiency solar cells.”
This article can be found in its original format on the Imperial Innovations website
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