News Article
IQE To Lead The Way
IQE’s Wafer Technology division to lead £2 million 4” GaSb Thermo-Photovoltaic (TPV) Project
IQE has announced that its Milton Keynes based wafer operation, Wafer Technology Ltd., will lead a collaborative effort to develop highly efficient thermo-photovoltaic (TPV) cells for electricity generation from waste heat from industrial processes.
The £2M project has been awarded by the Technology Strategy Board. Wafer Technology will lead a consortium of partners including Lancaster University and QinetiQ.
The project aims to realise novel low bandgap TPV devices based on alloys including InAsSb and InGaSbN lattice matched to GaSb substrates. Such cells will exhibit significantly higher efficiencies than existing devices and will more effectively generate electricity from waste heat sources at temperatures below 1000ºC.
Wafer Technology's contribution will be to extend their world leading GaSb substrate technology to 4” diameter. Lancaster and QinetiQ will undertake epitaxial growth studies of these novel narrow gap alloys and QinetiQ will also fabricate the devices. Prototype TPV systems will be validated by two further industrial partners to assess their performance in real industrial processes and environments.
Commenting on the project, Dr Mark Furlong, Sales and Marketing Director at IQE's Wafer Technology Division said: “Thermo-voltaic cells will play an important role in the drive towards providing an efficient and cost effective way of recovering waste energy from a wide range of industrial processes and recycling that energy into electricity. TPV's add to the growing portfolio of the Group's energy efficient products that include ultra high brightness LEDs and high efficiency concentrator-photovoltaic (CPV) solar cells.”
The £2M project has been awarded by the Technology Strategy Board. Wafer Technology will lead a consortium of partners including Lancaster University and QinetiQ.
The project aims to realise novel low bandgap TPV devices based on alloys including InAsSb and InGaSbN lattice matched to GaSb substrates. Such cells will exhibit significantly higher efficiencies than existing devices and will more effectively generate electricity from waste heat sources at temperatures below 1000ºC.
Wafer Technology's contribution will be to extend their world leading GaSb substrate technology to 4” diameter. Lancaster and QinetiQ will undertake epitaxial growth studies of these novel narrow gap alloys and QinetiQ will also fabricate the devices. Prototype TPV systems will be validated by two further industrial partners to assess their performance in real industrial processes and environments.
Commenting on the project, Dr Mark Furlong, Sales and Marketing Director at IQE's Wafer Technology Division said: “Thermo-voltaic cells will play an important role in the drive towards providing an efficient and cost effective way of recovering waste energy from a wide range of industrial processes and recycling that energy into electricity. TPV's add to the growing portfolio of the Group's energy efficient products that include ultra high brightness LEDs and high efficiency concentrator-photovoltaic (CPV) solar cells.”
