Mayaterials is a company that received a SBIR Phase I grant for a project entitled: Solar Grade Silicon from Agricultural Byproducts. Their project will develop a process to convert renewable agricultural byproducts to solar grade silicon metal in an energy efficient and environmentally friendly manner. The hulls of rice and many other grain plants are rich in silica derived from the soil in which they are grown. This silica can be extracted in a highly purified form from rice hull ash to produce useful specialty chemicals. It can also be extracted to provide a basic feedstock for the production of solar grade silicon for the production of photovoltaic cells. This process will bypass the capital and energy intensive methods, such as the Siemens process, which are currently in use. The broader impact/commercial potential from this technology could develop a process which will enable the production of high purity silicon directly from agricultural byproducts without the use of the current energy intensive methods such as the Siemens process. The process uses an abundant waste product as a renewable material source in an energy-efficient manner to achieve a valuable product at low cost and with minimal environmental impact. Current production of crystalline photovoltaic cells is limited by the bottleneck of poly-silicon production. This innovative new process will enable downstream PV plants to run at full capacity, unconstrained by shortages of raw material, thus allowing more rapid adoption of solar energy at lower cost per kWp. Furthermore, the proposed process will be better for the environment in that it is much less energy intensive and uses less toxic chemicals than existing methods.

SCHOTT Solar's high-quality products exploit the virtually inexhaustible potential of the sun as a renewable source of energy. For this purpose SCHOTT Solar produces important components for photovoltaic applications and solar energy plants with parabolic trough technology. In the photovoltaic industry, the compnay is one of the few ingetrated manufacturers of crystalline silicon wafers, cells and modules. Wafer production is mainly carried out through a WACKER SCHOTT Solar joint venture, which aims to ensure the supply of silicon necessary for long-term growth.

Gratings Incorporated is a company that received a STTR Phase I grant for a project entitled: High Efficiency Thin-film Photovoltaics on Low-cost Substrates by Layer Transfer. Their their award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and their project will apply high aspect ratio, nm-scale, columnar, and crystalline Si structures as templates for high-quality growth of thin-film GaAs solar cells on low-cost flexible substrates. Sub-10-nm Si seed layers are expected to facilitate growth of low-defect density GaAs films. The aspect ratio of nm-scale structures also serve as sacrificial layers for removal of completed GaAs solar cell. Epitaxial growth and characterization of GaAs films on nm-scale Si structures will be carried out at the Center for High Technology at the University of New Mexico. Successful phase I STTR research will lead to commercialization of high (~ 20 %) efficient, flexible solar cells for applications in a wide range of terrestrial and space environments. Multiple substrate re-use and inherent large area processing capability of Si will result in significant cost reductions. High quality heteroepitaxial GaAs growth on Si has been a subject of intense research. Due to its direct bandgap, GaAs is attractive for a number of optoelectronics applications and its integration with Si-based microelectronics has been a cherished goal. The lattice and thermal expansion mismatches with Si make it difficult to grow good device quality layers. We have recently demonstrated as the Si seed dimension is reduced below 100 nm dimensions, the quality of heteroepitaxial growth increases rapidly. The nm-scale Si structures are formed using low-cost, large area methods based on conventional integrated circuit processing methods. Successful research effort will lead to reduction in PV generation costs, and enhanced applicability of thin-film PV in terrestrial and space environments because in contrast with competing thin-film solar cells, GaAs thin-film solar cells will not suffer from light-induced performance degradation.

Alenas Imaging is a company that received a STTR Phase I grant for a project entitled: Thermoreflectance for Defect Mapping and Process-Control of Solar Cells. Their project will demonstrate a new method of thermographic imaging to improve the manufacturing yield and energy conversion efficiency of silicon photovoltaic solar cells. Although thermographic imaging is an ideal method for locating the defects and shunts in solar cells which compromise their efficiency, conventional infrared cameras do not have sufficient spatial resolution to be effective as a production tool for NDE (Non-Destructive Evaluation). The proposed technology will produce 100X higher spatial resolution with 1 mK thermal resolution at much lower system cost than infrared cameras. project will demonstrate a new method of thermographic imaging to improve the manufacturing yield and energy conversion efficiency of silicon photovoltaic solar cells. Although thermographic imaging is an ideal method for locating the defects and shunts in solar cells which compromise their efficiency, conventional infrared cameras do not have sufficient spatial resolution to be effective as a production tool for NDE (Non-Destructive Evaluation). The proposed technology will produce 100X higher spatial resolution with 1 mK thermal resolution at much lower system cost than infrared cameras.

Silicon Photonics Group is a company that received a STTR Phase I grant for a project entitled: Advanced Si-Ge-Sn-based Photonic Materials and Devices. Their research project aims to demonstrate prototype infrared light detectors and photovoltaic (solar cell) devices based on technology developed at Arizona State University. The new technology to be explored consists in growing optical-quality alloys of tin and germanium (Ge1-ySny) directly on silicon wafers. These alloys act as infrared materials, and they can also be used as templates for the subsequent growth of other semiconductors on silicon. Of particular interest for this project is the ternary alloy Ge1-x-ySixSny, grown for the first time at Arizona State University. Using this technology, it should be possible to build infrared detectors covering a spectral range previously inaccessible to silicon-based detectors, and to build multijunction photovoltaic devices for a more efficient capture of solar photons. The fabrication of semiconductor devices on cheap silicon wafers is of great significance because of the potentially enormous cost reductions and the possibility of integrating optoelectronic and microelectronic functions, which further reduces costs and contributes to system miniaturization. The infrared detectors proposed here cover the so-called telecom C-,L-, and U-bands within the wavelength window around 1500 nm, a region of great interest to the telecommunications industry. In the photovoltaics arena, the proposed devices have the potential to offer increased efficiencies to make crystalline silicon-based devices competitive with amorphous silicon solutions.

Isosceles is a company that received a STTR Phase I grant for a project entitled: Full Spectrum Conjugated Polymers for Highly Efficient Organic Photovoltaics. Their their award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and their project will demonstrate the feasibility of forming full spectrum highly efficient polymer solar cells from newly designed conjugated and potentially variable bandgap polymers that harvest visible through infrared light. The novel materials will be forged by incorporating Silole and donor-acceptor-donor moieties into the backbone and are expected to increase light harvesting and carrier mobility, and hence short circuit current output potentially by a factor of three over the state of the art. The key innovations of this work will also optimize energy levels to reduce voltage loss and further optimization of device structure and film morphology is expected improve fill factor. The primary objective of phase I is to determine the feasibility of forging full spectrum and high carrier mobility conjugated polymers that achieve highly efficient solar conversion. An ancillary goal of this work is arrive at an understanding of photophysical processes and device physics that will lead to optimal device fabrication during phase II. The environmental, societal and economic impacts of this technology are enormously broad. The ensuing abrupt drop in energy costs stemming from full spectrum harvesting promises to deliver stability and urgently needed relief to today's volatile oil based global economy. While photovoltaic (PV) production is already the fastest growing source of energy across the globe, the planned efforts of this STTR project are expected to disruptively reduce the projected cost of photovoltaic production in 2010 by a factor of 3. At a forecasted production cost of $0.70 per Watt, this research will demonstrate a technology that is competitive with the cost of electricity that is produced from fossil fuels. This technology will provide clean and cost competitive energy for home and industrial power, vehicle propulsion, consumer electronics, remote sensing, security, and an endless list of existing applications that currently rely on energy from fossil fuel.