IQE backs Solar Junction in $19.2 million D round

LONDON – Solar Junction Inc., a developer of multi-junction cells for the concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) market, has raised $19.2 million in a Series D round of investment. IQE plc (Cardiff, Wales) is investing $5 million and receives an exclusive multi-year epitaxial wafer supply contract with Solar Junction.

The money came from current investors with additional funding and partnership from IQE plc, a supplier of engineered wafers. The money is earmarked for the scaling up of manufacturing capacity by Solar Junction (San Jose, Calif.).

Solar Junction was founded in 2007 and aims to reduce CPV module costs to less than $1 per watt of output power by taking efficiency above 50 percent. The company's cells incorporate proprietary adjustable spectrum lattice-matched, A-SLAM technology. In April 2011 Solar Junction claimed to have set a world-record of 43.5 percent efficiency for a production-ready solar cell.

"In the face of all the externalities hindering solar - pricing, overseas competition, financial markets - Solar Junction has multi-megawatt orders, the financing, the manufacturing capacity and the world record for cell efficiency that will catapult CPV into newer and bigger markets," said Jim Weldon, Solar Junction founder and CEO, in a statement.

Investors in the latest funding round were New Enterprise Associates, Advanced Technology Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and IQE.


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