1366 Technologies is a company based in Lexington, Massachusetts that has developed a technique to produce silicon wafers by casting them in their ultimate shape directly in a mold, rather than the prevailing standard method in which wafers are cut from a large ingot. The company's management predicts that the new approach will be able to produce wafers at costs 40% below current methods.[1] The company's name is a reference to the solar constant, representing the watts of solar energy that hits each square meter of the surface of the earth. It is also the number of pins of Intel's current high-end socket, LGA1366.
Contents |
The company used a $4 million grant obtained from the United States Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program in December 2009 to fund research over an 18-month period. Grants from ARPA-E are is designed to provide money to relatively small projects offering the potential for high-payoff results in fostering advanced techniques. 1366 Technologies was able to announce eight months into the grant period that it had achieved success in its casting technology, in which molten silicon is poured directly into a mold to produce wafers in their final form, a square 6 inches (15 cm) on each side that is 200 micrometres thick and are then extracted from the mold using a proprietary technique to ensure that the wafer doesn't break while being removed from the mold.[1] In traditional methods, wafers of this size are cut from a large single ingot or crystal, in an approach that leaves as much as half of the original silicon ingot as waste.[2]
David Danielson, program director for solar energy at ARPA-E said that "early indications show this could be one of our great success stories." In conjunction with the lower-cost molding technique, the wafers from 1366 Technologies will have finer wires on its surface to minimize shadows and will be drilled with a series of holes to create an internal surface area that allows additional light energy to be captured.[1] ARPA-E's first director Arun Majumdar estimated that current techniques generate solar power at a cost of $4 per watt, and that bringing down that cost to $1.50 per watt could lead to the widespread adoption of solar energy.[3] Company president Frank van Mierlo estimated that solar power generated using wafers from 1366 Technologies would be cheaper than power generated using coal.[1]
1366 Technologies has raised $20 million in capital to commercialize their innovation, from such investors as South Korean Hanwha Chemical, a major user of silicon wafers, as well as from Ventizz Capital Fund, North Bridge Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners.[1] The money raised comes in addition to $12.4 million raised from investors in March 2008 and $5.1 million in February 2010, bringing the total financing to $37.5 million.[4]