http://www.quantasol.com/news/product_frontpage/ Investment News Articles en sue.sparkes@quantasol.com Copyright 2008 2008-09-18T13:02:00+00:00 http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantasol_featured_in_the_cleantech_100/ http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantasol_featured_in_the_cleantech_100/#When:12:02:00Z QuantaSol featured in The Guardian/Library House CleanTech 100 - companies described as having a stake in how our world develops.QuantaSol has been featured in today's Guardian/Library House CleanTech 100, which aims to highlight a group of the most promising private companies in Europe focusing on clean technology, with ­companies selected on the basis of their potential for future growth and ­beneficial environmental impact. The full article and background can be accessed at Revealed: Europe's hottest clean technology companies. 2008-09-18T12:02:00+00:00 http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantasol_selected_by_alwayson_as_a_goinggreen_top_100_winner/ http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantasol_selected_by_alwayson_as_a_goinggreen_top_100_winner/#When:06:22:01Z QuantaSol today announced that it has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the GoingGreen Top 100 Winners. Inclusion in the GoingGreen 100 signifies major developments in the creation of new business opportunities in the green technology industries. QuantaSol was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and other industry experts spanning the globe, based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.QuantaSol and the GoingGreen Top 100 Companies will be honored at GoingGreen 2008, scheduled to occur on September 15-17, 2008 at Cavallo Point in Sausalito, CA. This two-and-a-half-day executive event features CEO presentations and high-level debates on the most promising emerging green technologies and new entrepreneurial opportunities. At GoingGreen AlwaysOn editors will also honor the GoingGreen 100 Top Private Companies. Fifty top CEOs will pitch their market strategies to a panel of industry experts in a “CEO Showcase.” “The GoingGreen Top 100 winners have excelled in key strategic areas in the global clean energy technology markets,” said Tony Perkins, founder and CEO of AlwaysOn. “We congratulate them for their success in introducing new tools, services, and systems that are driving the next phase of greentech innovation and transforming the biggest industries on earth.” "We are delighted and proud to receive this recognition," said Kevin Arthur, Director and CEO of QuantaSol. "It serves to motivate us even more towards our goal of building QuantaSol into the World’s leading supplier of concentrating solar cells." A full list of all the GoingGreen Top 100 Winners will be published on the AlwaysOn Web site on September 4th at http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/28868 About AlwaysOn AlwaysOn ignited the open-media revolution in early 2003 by being the first media brand to launch a community blog network. In 2004, AlwaysOn continued to lead the industry in innovation by engaging its bloggers in a social network. AlwaysOn is also revolutionizing the media business by applying its open-media principles to its executive event series (Stanford Summit, OnHollywood, Breakout, OnMedia, GoingGreen, NordicGreen, and Venture Summits East and West) and quarterly print “blogozine”. No other media brand has dared to create such open interaction with its readers and event participants. 2008-09-11T06:22:01+00:00 http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantasol_greenbang/ http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantasol_greenbang/#When:12:32:01Z QuantaSol has been featured in the Greenbang UK Clean-Tech Start-up Index for 2008 - a report profiling some of the UK's best new companies in the clean tech industry.Kevin Arthur, QuantaSol's CEO says "The leadership of the Clean Tech revolution will be in the hands of businesses, not governments who, with a few notable exceptions, seem incapable of moving quickly enough". The full report can be downloaded at http://www.greenbang.com/wp-content/uploads/greenbang-clean-tech-start-up-index.pdf 2008-09-08T12:32:01+00:00 http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantasol_featured_on_bbc_working_lunch/ http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantasol_featured_on_bbc_working_lunch/#When:12:53:00Z BBC programme "Working Lunch" has featured QuantaSol as part of an edition aired on Monday 14th July 2008, which examines spin off businesses from Imperial College. Working Lunch provides a popular perspective on business, personal finance and consumer news, and is broadcast on weekday lunchtimes on BBC 2 at 12.30. A summary of the thirty minute programme, featuring the Spin off companies only, can be viewed at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/7508436.stm. 2008-07-16T12:53:00+00:00 http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantum_well_technology_featured_in_photovoltaic_conference_technical_highl/ http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantum_well_technology_featured_in_photovoltaic_conference_technical_highl/#When:10:51:00Z In one of the Oral and Poster Session Highlights at the 33rd Photovoltaics Specialist Conference in San Diego, Jessica Adams of Imperial College London has shown QuantaSol’s latest performance characterization and analysis of strain-balanced quantum well solar cells on multi-wafer production MOVPE runs. Her work demonstrates highly uniform quantum well properties and fairly uniform distributed Bragg reflectors properties across 100 mm GaAs wafers. This is crucial for possible future high volume manufacturing of strain-balanced quantum well solar cells by MOVPE.The conference itself far exceeded the attendance of any previous conference in the series, with almost 1600 attendees. The technical program for the first full day of the conference featured six Keynote Addresses in the morning. The afternoon was opened with four parallel Oral sessions, followed by four unopposed poster sessions. 2008-05-16T10:51:00+00:00 http://www.quantasol.com/news/investment/quantasol_receives_second_tranche_of_seed_investment/ http://www.quantasol.com/news/investment/quantasol_receives_second_tranche_of_seed_investment/#When:10:53:00Z QuantaSol Limited ("QuantaSol") has achieved the technical milestones required by the seed investors, triggering the second tranche of investment totalling £500,000.QuantaSol received in June 2007 as part of an overall £1.35 million seed funding round £850,000, which included investment from Low Carbon Accelerator, Imperial Innovations, Numis Securities Ltd, Netscientific Ltd, and Sheffield University Enterprise. Low Carbon Accelerator and Imperial Innovations were co-lead equity investors. In January 2008, following the successful demonstration of single junction cell efficiencies exceeding 27% efficiency at 500 suns concentration, made from wafers grown in a commercial epitaxial production reactor, QuantaSol demonstrated the scalability and very high efficiency potential of quantum-well photovoltaic (QWPV) cells, and received the second tranche (£500,000) of the seed investment. QuantaSol will provide solar photovoltaic ("PV") cells for use in concentrating photovoltaic ("CPV") systems for the fast growing utility-scale solar power generation market. Quantasol used the original funds to produce prototypes of its QWPV cells and to engage with potential customers for such cells and will use the additional funds to continue their product development. 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 and other semiconductor materials. These materials are more expensive than silicon, which is commonly used for flat panel PV cells, 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% as opposed to silicon and thin film cells whose efficiencies are below 20%. Currently, the world efficiency record for single junction cells, held by the US company Varian, stands at 27.8% and has been unequalled for 20 years. However, QuantaSol's cells are consistently recording efficiency levels of 27.5% and the management team are confident of reaching levels equal to or in excess of the world record during 2008. Kevin Arthur, CEO of QuantaSol, said: "The world record for solar efficiency was a real one-off and our results consistently come very close to equalling that. With the new round of funding in place we are confident of setting a new efficiency record for single junction cells during 2008. The quantum wells also make it possible to enhance the efficiency of multi-junction cells and, during 2008, QuantaSol also aims to set a record 35% tandem (dual junction) cell efficiency." Dr Tom Tibbits, Product Engineering Director, said, “We are justifiably proud of our achievements in such a short time, and look forward to developing very high efficiency QWPV tandem cell concepts for our customers in 2008. We have shown the inherent volume scalability of the technology and are developing relationships with strategic partners to assist us on our path to mass production.” Notes to Editors: CPV is the technology of using focussing optics to drive the cost of photovoltaic electricity down by dramatically reducing the quantity of expensive semiconductor components in the system, replacing them with relatively cheap optical components. QuantaSol’s cells are developed to cope with the much higher thermal and photon fluxes experienced by the cells in these systems. They are also more efficient than typical silicon based solar cells, further reducing cost. QWPV cells were invented by company Founder Prof. Keith Barnham at Imperial College in 1989 and research into the concept has continued there ever since. The advantage that the quantum wells bring is the ability to ‘tune’ the cells to maximise the energy harvest in concentrator systems. This in turn reduces the cost of the electricity produced, helping make PV power cost-competitive with conventional electricity sources. 2008-04-02T10:53:00+00:00 http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantasol_exploits_quantum_effects_compound_semiconductor/ http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/quantasol_exploits_quantum_effects_compound_semiconductor/#When:12:04:00Z Photon recycling and quantum wells enhance single-junction solar cell efficiencies and will boost tandem cell performance to triple-junction levels, say Quantasol’s Kevin Arthur and Keith Barnham.Download the full Full Article as a PDF. Rising concerns over global warming and energy security are fueling a ramp in solar cell manufacture. Global production is increasing at 47% a year in terms of power, and independent market analyst Peter Lynch claims that this industry is now growing faster than any other. This rapid expansion has led to a temporary shortage of polycrystalline silicon, the dominant material used for making solar cells. Supply of this semiconductor has struggled to keep up with recent demand and this has opened the door for thin-film technologies, such as amorphous silicon-on-glass. These alternatives offer a lower cost-per-unit-area and a faster production process, but have the drawback of low efficiencies. While traditional silicon solar cells can typically deliver efficiencies of 15%, thin-film versions can only yield single-digit values. Martin Green from the Photovoltaics Research Center at the University of New South Wales, Australia, claims that any further reduction in the solar cell’s key metric – the dollar-per-peak-watt cost ($/Wp) – will be restricted by the large, fixed, balance-of-systems costs of a photovoltaic power system, such as the inverter that converts the electricity from DC to AC form. So, the best way to reduce the $/Wp ratio is to use more-efficient cells. The high-efficiency triple-junction solar cells produced by the likes of Emcore and Spectrolab offer one solution. These devices were mainly developed for space applications where high costs are not a concern, but they are now starting to be deployed into high-concentration systems that focus sunlight onto small cells with cheap lenses and mirrors. The market for these systems is being stimulated by feed-in tariffs for renewable electricity. These have recently been introduced in a number of countries, with Germany and other parts of Europe leading the way. However, the booming market is also attracting other forms of innovative concentrator technologies, such as large dish systems and novel solar combined-heat-and-power systems. At Quantasol – a UK spin-out of Imperial College London, based in Richmond upon Thames – we are also planning to enter this market with our patented high-efficiency concentrator cells. These devices share the hallmarks of the triple-junction cell – high efficiencies at high concentrations. However, we avoid problems with material dislocations by strain balancing the entire epistructure. As a result, we can offer unique features that boost efficiency, such as photon recycling and hot-electron effects. 2008-01-09T12:04:00+00:00 http://www.quantasol.com/news/investment/investment_received_from_low_carbon_accelerator_ltd/ http://www.quantasol.com/news/investment/investment_received_from_low_carbon_accelerator_ltd/#When:11:14:00Z Low Carbon Accelerator Limited has announced that it has made an investment of £480,000 in QuantaSol Limited for a 15.34% equity stake.The investment was part of an overall £1.35 million seed funding round which also included investment from Imperial Innovations, Numis Securities Ltd, Netscientific Ltd, and Sheffield University Enterprise. Low Carbon Accelerator and Imperial Innovations were co-lead equity investors. QuantaSol plans to provide solar photovoltaic ("PV") cells for use in concentrating photovoltaic ("CPV") systems for the fast growing utility-scale solar power generation market. QuantaSol will use the funds to produce prototypes of its Quantum Well Photovoltaic ("QWPV") cells and to engage with potential customers for such 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 and other semiconductor materials. These materials are more expensive than silicon, which is commonly used for flat panel PV cells, 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% as opposed to silicon and thin film cells whose efficiencies are below 20%. The company has a strong and experienced management team 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 Securities, as a non-executive director. 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. Dr. Stephen Mahon, Chief Investment Officer at Low Carbon Initiative, LCA's investment manager, said: "We are pleased to be supporting this innovative technology from such a team of world-class scientists. Last year the International Energy Agency noted that some of the key challenges facing the PV industry were making cells more efficient and increasing their lifespan. QuantaSol's technology will help meet these challenges as they scale up to become a significant player in the concentrated PV market." Kevin Arthur, CEO of QuantaSol, said: "We are very grateful for the support that we have received from Low Carbon Accelerator, 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 third generation, high efficiency solar cells." This article can be found in its original format on the Carbon International website 2007-08-15T11:14:00+00:00 http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/we_dont_need_the_nuclear_option/ http://www.quantasol.com/news/product/we_dont_need_the_nuclear_option/#When:11:08:00Z New solar and wind power developments could lead to a rapid growth in renewable energy, says Keith Barnham in a recent interview with the Guardian.Jim Al-Khalili is deeply concerned that people believe "we can slash our reliance on coal and gas solely through renewable resources, such as wind and solar, along with energy conservation" (Nuclear waste is hardly a worry when the climate change threat is so urgent, July 26). I own up to being a believer and, as a fellow physicist, ask: where is Jim's data? Here is some of mine. More solar energy strikes the Earth in one hour than is consumed by all human activity in a year. In the UK more than 60% of our electricity is used in buildings. The solar energy falling on those buildings exceeds by more than seven times the energy consumed inside. Hence more than half the UK electricity demand could be met by covering all south-facing roofs with the current 14%-efficient solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. That is ignoring small wind turbines and new technology. The PV cells my company is commercialising have twice this efficiency and can be much less obtrusive. The most significant feature of the newer wind turbine and PV systems is that they come in small units and can be installed very quickly. Not only do these micro-generation technologies have much shorter lead-in times than the 10-year wait for nuclear stations (or the 20-35 years for Al-Khalili's technology to transmute nuclear waste), but installations can grow exponentially, as happens for consumer electrical products. The most optimistic assumption for new nuclear build is a linear rise of one new reactor a year, starting in 10 years' time. For example, PV use in Germany has been growing exponentially over the past decade. One hundred times as much PV electrical capacity as in the UK has already been installed. If similar policies were introduced here, the combination of wind and PV electricity generation would dwarf the proposed nuclear build well before a single new nuclear unit of electricity is generated. According to Al-Khalili, people like me are "utterly irrational" in being concerned about nuclear waste. But plutonium will be a problem for hundreds of thousands of years, not tens of thousands as he claims. He argues that science will eventually find a way "to deal with this buried waste thousands of years in the future". I consider it immoral that we should leave more than 10,000 generations to deal with the waste of the three generations who will have consumed the world's exploitable uranium reserves. For a start, how will they know where the plutonium is buried, when the store must survive intact for more than 100 times the age of Stonehenge? Rather than developing transmutation or fast-breeder schemes which may not work, and which involve the transportation of large amounts of plutonium, the highest priority of the nuclear industry should be to solve the long-term waste storage problem. The urgency of finding a solution was re-emphasised by the recent revelation that the failed London tube bombers had the plans of the Sizewell B nuclear station. · Keith Barnham is emeritus professor of physics at Imperial College London, and a co-founder of the solar cell manufacturing company QuantaSol. This article can be found in its original format on the Guardian website. 2007-08-09T11:08:00+00:00 http://www.quantasol.com/news/investment/investment_received_from_imperial_innovations_group/ http://www.quantasol.com/news/investment/investment_received_from_imperial_innovations_group/#When:11:11:00Z 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 2007-08-01T11:11:00+00:00