Heliatek looks to raise €60m to put flexible solar sheets into production
"Our production is ready, now we intend to raise an additional €60 million from current and new investors to significantly increase the capacity", said Thibaud Le Séguillon, CEO of Heliatek. "We are operating the world’s first production line in which organic solar films are manufactured in a roll-to-roll process using vacuum deposition. Our production readiness is a major milestone and allows us to offer our energy harvesting components to our partners for application development by Q3 2012 as scheduled," adds Le Séguillon.
Heliatek manufactures energy harvesting components made of flexible solar films based on organic semiconductor materials and technology from the Technical University of Dresden (IAPP) and the University of Ulm. The company inaugurated its first production facility last March in Dresden and the manufacturing line is now up and running, with the plant carrying out the scheduled trial production.
The light weight, transparent solar film can be integrated into building and construction materials, car-roofs and street furniture. The first solar films coming out of the line will be used for concrete façade projects as well as for pilots and prototypes with partners.
"Our first customers and partners are early adopters. We work with them closely to make our product a de-facto standard as solar energy harvesting components," said Le Séguillon. "Energiewende goes beyond replacing nuclear power plants with wind and solar farms. Heliatek solar films will be used in applications never served before by traditional PV [photovoltaics]."
"Our production process is similar to the one used by OLED today, but with the addition of the roll-to-roll element," said Dr Martin Pfeiffer, co-founder and CTO of Heliatek. "This is important to mitigate the production ramp-up risks. Heliatek is the recognized world leader in OPV technology. We have an independently confirmed cell efficiency of 10.7 %, a product which passed IEC lifetime tests in our laboratories, and external measurement data that confirms the superior harvesting factor compared to other PV technologies. Our chemistry and physics R&D labs allow us to continuously extend our lead in organic photovoltaics and to improve our already strong patent portfolio; it covers our in-house developed and synthesized molecules, our cell structure and even some of our processes. That’s how we are creating a highly defendable entry barrier for anyone trying to copy us."
www.heliatek.com
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