Cutting-edge equipment technology belongs to the category of non-notch solar wafers or direct solar wafers. According to the company, its "plug-in" manufacturing technology has reduced wafer costs by 50%, increased commercial solar panel power by 7%, and reduced manufacturing emissions by more than 50%. It may be that the emissions part has won the favor of investors.
The leading equipment technology company, a start-up company that manufactures equipment to produce non-notch monocrystalline silicon wafers for solar panels, has just completed a US$7.6 million Series A financing. This round of financing was led by Prime Impact Fund, Clean Energy Ventures and DSM Ventures. The startup’s previous investors include Applied Materials, Clean Energy Ventures, and David Bouzby.
The company's technology belongs to the category of non-notch wafers or direct wafers. Seamless production does not require sawing silicon ingots into wafers. This is a time-consuming and energy-consuming multi-step process that uses consumables and waste as silicon powder.
According to the company, its "plug-in" manufacturing technology has reduced wafer costs by 50%, increased commercial solar panel power by 7%, and reduced manufacturing emissions by more than 50%.
Earlier this year, Rick Schwerdtfeger joined Leading Edge as CEO, and Nathan Stoddard joined as Chief Technology Officer. According to data from Pitchbook, before this round of financing, the startup had received $1.45 million in angel and venture capital, and received $4 million in US Department of Energy funding. Founder and board member Alison Greenlee worked at 1366 Technologies, a non-notch silicon wafer start-up company, and currently serves as chief product officer.
The company's product is a new type of silicon wafer production furnace.
CEO Rick Schwerdtfeger told Photovoltaic Magazine, “The melting furnace is actually producing single crystals—basically a single wafer-wide ribbon that comes out of the furnace, which is then laser cut into parts in the furnace, and these parts can be further laser-cut. Or split into a net shape wafer, without diamond sawing and sawing to remove damage and etching — nor traditional cutting, nor all the challenges of turning very large CZ ingots into thin wafers. We basically grow out of the furnace A net shape wafer."
The "floating silicon method" process was pioneered by the leading founder Peter Kellerman at Varian Semiconductor, and was later acquired by Applied Materials for US$4.9 billion in 2011.
CEO Schwerdtfeger said that the "dirty little secret" of solar energy is the energy intensity and emissions during the purification and molding of silicon materials. He said: "There is almost no silicon wastage in our process-this has a significant impact on factory emissions."
The emissions components cited by this startup are increasingly important to investors who have ESG papers and the problems that the Ultra Low Carbon Solar Alliance is trying to solve. The alliance hopes to increase market awareness of the decarbonization of the solar supply chain.
Other startups have already embarked on a seamless path with limited success. Twin Creeks and SiGen tried to use ion implantation to make non-notch silicon. Crystal Solar and Ampulse are developing gas-to-wafer technology. Evergreen Solar is a listed strip solar company. These companies no longer exist.
1366 Technologies still exists and directly uses molten silicon to form wafers.
Frontier customers are established solar module companies, and perhaps some upstarts eager to challenge these established companies. The CEO of the start-up company stated that he hopes to "put the melting pot into the field before the end of next year."
Schwerdtfeger told Photovoltaic Magazine that the reason he accepted the job was "this is the most disruptive innovation I have seen in the silicon field in the past 30 years-I have to participate in it."
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More articles by Eric Wesoff
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