Spire Corporation (Nasdaq: SPIR) today announced that its subsidiary, Spire Semiconductor, LLC, has been awarded an 18-month, $3.7 million program by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), consisting of $2.9 million 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 Corporation, added, “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.”
Spire Corporation provieds turnkey production lines and capital equipment to manufacture PV modules and cells worldwide. Spire Semiconductor is a compound semiconductor foundry specializing in wafer epitaxy and device fabrication, including custom GaAs cells for solar concentrator systems. Spire Semiconductor also provides processing technology for Spire’s silicon solar cell manufacturing lines.
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