£399,562 UK grant for printable CIGS solar project
Nanoco Group plc, a developer and manufacturer of cadmium-free quantum dots and other nanomaterials, has announced a grant award from Innovate UK, the British Government agency formerly named the Technology Strategy Board, in connection with the further development of the company's printable solar cell technology.
The £399,562 grant was awarded under Innovate UK's Energy Catalyst programme and will fund the Company's part of a collaborative project with Loughborough University's Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology (CREST). CREST, which will also receive an Innovate UK grant for the project, is a major UK centre for photovoltaic research, offering excellent facilities and technical expertise.
The objective of the two-year project, which has a total value of almost £1 million, is to build on Nanoco's progress to date in solar energy by using its novel copper, indium, gallium, selenide (CIGS) solar ink to create a solution-processed, integrated, thin film photovoltaic mini-module.
Nanoco and CREST will work together to optimise the CIGS mini-module architecture. CREST's wide range of analytical techniques will be used to assist in the mini-module's development and measurement.
Michael Edelman, Nanoco's Chief Executive Officer, commented: "We're very pleased to receive this grant award from Innovate UK to fund the next stage of development of our exciting solar ink technology. We have already achieved an efficiency of around 17 percent from the solar ink and it is the objective of this grant funded project to scale the technology up to the size of a mini-module. This is our first project with Loughborough University and we are delighted to be able to work with its world class photovoltaic research centre."
