Sol Voltaics secures USD 21.3m for solar film commercialisation

Swedish company Sol Voltaics said today it has raised USD 21.3 million (EUR 18.8m) in a funding round to speed up commercialisation of its thin film solar technology.

In the latest financing round, touted as the largest for a European solar technology company since 2015, Norwegian company Watrium AS joined existing investors Kagra Gruppen AS, Industrifonden, FAM AB, Nano Future Invest, Blue Marlin AB and Teknoinvest AS.

Sol Voltaics has developed the SolFilm, which consists of billions of gallium arsenide (GaAs) nanowires. It is in the final stages of technology optimisation and the firm expects to be able to send samples to partners by the end of 2018.

According to the company, the film could enable solar panel manufacturers to reach up to 27% efficiency when integrated as a tandem-junction module. It could also be used as a single-junction, low-cost solar power generation solution.

“This latest round of finance gives us the critical capital required to commercialize our efficiency boosting technology for the solar market,” CEO Erik Smith said, adding that the firm is now fully focused on reaching mass production of SolFilm.

In May Sol Voltaics announced a key milestone in its work -- the manufacture of photovoltaic (PV) nanowires using the Aerotaxy process, originating out of Lund University in Sweden. The nanowires are grown so that the top and bottom of the wire have opposite doping profiles. This makes each nanowire a fully functional solar cell, with a pn junction along the length of the wire.

In the past 12 months, Sol Voltaics has raised USD 38 million.

(USD 1 = EUR 0.88)

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