AOS Solar was started in 2005 to combine the material cost and manufacturing process economics of thin film solar PV with the efficiency and reliability of crystalline silicon solar PV. The company have an initial prototype solar coupon built and tested using technology. nnThe company's key enablers to achieve market traction are the cost and reliability of the company's product. The silicon on glass (SOG) technology the company are developing will enable solar panels costing around $1/watt to manufacture on the company's pilot line, with lower costs as the company ramp up production due to manufacturing efficiencies and learning curve. Solar silicon is an established technology with proven 20+ year life (versus newer thin film technologies). nnToday the company have working coupons at 7.5% efficiency and the company are working to scale up to larger cells with target 9% efficiency in Q-1, 2008. The company's form factor and efficiency limits are based on first generation technology. By scaling the company's manufacturing and improving the company's technology the company expect to achieve 16 - 18% efficiency in a single junction and 22 - 24% efficiency in a double junction module. nnThe company's A round funding will be used to continue development of the company's equipment / process technology in order to manufacture on larger substrates (2.5' x 4' glass) and to design a scaled up manufacturing line (30+MW annual capacity) based on this development.

Solarno is a company that received a STTR Phase I grant for a project entitled: Synthesis of multifunctional nanofibrous polyaniline/carbon composites. Their their award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and their project will develop novel multifunctional materials based on polyaniline (PAni) nanofibers (PANFs) and carbon nanofibers(CNFs) for energy storage. Although PAni composites have been reported for a wide range of applications, including sensors, biosensors, photoelectrochromic cells, etc., due to their excellent electrical, thermal and mechanical properties, none capitalize on the enhanced properties expected from the combination of PANF with CNF. PANFs have greater electronic conductivity than PAni nanospheres and nanorods and can be synthesized on a variety of substrates. Solarno will use a proprietary process for synthesizing composites of PANFs on CNFs. In Phase I Solarno will use these composites as electrode materials for asymmetric supercapacitors, an enabling technology that provides both high energy and power, with the specific technical objectives of: synthesizing and characterizing PANFs on CNF substrates, and achieving supercapacitor performance of 15 Wh/kg, 10 kW/kg and >10 cycles, thus far exceeding current lead acid batteries in terms of power and cycle life. In Phase II we will improve the energy density of these devices to enable potential replacement of such batteries, and explore other functions for the composites, such as sensors and electro-chemical devices. The PANF/CNF composites developed by Solarno will be introduced to the supercapacitor market via materials sales, and partnering/licensing arrangements, and later to related electrochemical functions/applications. Solarno is targeting requirements of the Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) market for its initial supercapacitor designs, and as such, the ultimate customers will be major automobile manufacturers. The market requires that capacitors provide higher energy density, reduced size, higher reliability, and lower cost. Commercially available EDLCs commonly provide energy densities around 4 Wh/kg, and power densities between 15-21 kW/kg. The supercapacitor developed here can excel in this market by providing energy density > 25 Wh/kg and better reliability (>2.0 x 104 cycles); the Phase I work will optimize the properties of our PANF/CNF composite to meet this goal. The supercapacitors will also be well-suited for load-leveling for renewable energy sources; direct societal benefits will come from improving the viability of HEVs and renewable sources, tied to reductions in fossil fuel consumption, providing bridge power for wind and solar power farms, and partially replacing lead acid storage batteries. The results of this work in optimizing PAni composites for supercapacitors will translate well into improved functionality for other applications.

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.

Sonobond Ultrasonics' technology is playing a key role in the manufacture of the solar cells that make up solar panels. Sonobond's MS-5010PV Ultrasonic Photovoltaic (PV) Modular System is used to weld aluminum foil to the metallized glass on photovoltaic cells. Ultrasonic welding produces an ultra-reliable, solid-state metallurgical bond through the application of mechanical vibratory energy under pressure. The resulting interconnects between the photovoltaic cells create an array with excellent conductivity

M V Systems is a company that received a SBIR Phase II grant for a project entitled: Fabrication of Low-bandgap Nano-crystalline SiGeC Thin Films Using the Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) Technique. Their their award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 project is to develop thin film tandem solar cells, comprising of nanocrystalline silicon and silicon carbon (nc-Si and nc-Si:C) absorber materials, with a conversion efficiency of ~20%. The phase I project successfully developed one of the key components, i.e. intrinsic nc-Si:C with a band gap, Eg, of ~ 1.5 eV and with good opto-electronic properties. This key material will be used initially in phase II to fabricate cells in a single junction configuration with an efficiency goal of ~10%. Previously, developed "device quality" nc-Si materials, with Eg ~1.1eV, were used to produce solar cells with efficiency ~8%. Integrating the two devices in a tandem junction configuration is forecast to yield efficiencies of ~18%. Further improvement in the tandem junction device efficiency,to ~20%, may be achieved via the use of buffer layers at the p/i or i/n interfaces and by increasing the grain size which would boost the open circuit voltage, Voc. Higher efficiency thin film tandem solar cells will be critical to achieving the low costs necessary to achieve widespread adoption of photovoltaic energy generating systems. M V Systems is a company that received a SBIR Phase I grant for a project entitled: Fabrication of low-bandgap nano-crystalline SiGeC thin films using the Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) technique. Their project will develop nanocrystalline SiGeC thin films with an optical bandgap (Eg) in the range of 1.6-1.8 eV, and enhanced absorption characteristics, leading to low-cost, high-efficiency (>20%) photovoltaic devices. Previous attempts at improving the photovoltaic efficiency have not been consistent and successful. The proposed approach uses plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique to deposit these films, which allows greater control of the process by being able to manipulate the plasma and electron temperatures to control the ion density in the plasma, with an independent control of the process parameters. This flexibility does not exist in the currently used techniques. With the proposed technique, stable and consistent films of SiGeC can be deposited on the desired substrate at moderate temperatures. If successfully developed, this technique could provide higher efficiency solar cells for the alternative energy market. The goal of highly stable films, high deposition efficiency and process scalability for large-scale manufacturing can only be achieved if the basic process can be proven. The broader impacts of this research will be in the low-cost photovoltaic (PV) devices for power generation market. If successfully completed, this research could lead to a strong partnership between solar cell manufacturers and equipment manufacturers, leading to a potentially lucrative photovoltaics market. Currently, electricity generated with available PV devices is 3-4 times more expensive as the conventional electricity. The selected materials (Si, Ge and C) for the thin film are abundantly available, which can significantly reduce the raw materials costs. A large body of basic knowledge of the requirements of solar electricity for the competitive market already exists, which makes the development of the process with a realistic performance target easy to achieve. The main challenge for achieving this goal lies in being able to control the deposition process to assure a stable and robust process, as the previous work has not been able to achieve consistent results. The initial target of producing a triple-junction thin-film solar cell is a worthy first product demonstration, which will prove the efficacy of the proposed technique, and attract third-party funding with little difficulty.

Jem Enterprises is a company that received a SBIR Phase I grant for a project entitled: Tin(II) Sulfide Photovoltaics. Their project aims to develop photovoltaic devices based on tin (II) sulfide (SnS). The properties of SnS, including bandgaps, carrier density and mobility, chemical and thermal stability, and metallurgical properties, promise the possibility to achieve relatively high conversion efficiency given state-of-art process control and device design. In this project, close space sublimation (CSS) technique, a thin film fabrication method proven for low cost and high manufacturability, will be used to synthesize SnS. The broader/commercial impact of this project will be the potential to produce photovoltaic devices based on low-cost and environmentally-friendly materials. There is no doubt that solar electricity has attracted a lot of attention in recent years as an alternative and renewable energy source. However, most of the current solar cell technologies have one or more of the following issues that, (1) raw materials are not abundantly available; (2) toxic materials are used; (3) overall cost is high. This project will address these issues by developing photovoltaic devices using SnS, a semiconductor material that can be supplied on a massive scale and at low recovery costs.