QD Solar

The solar photovoltaic market is one of the fastest growing energy markets in the world. That growth comes amidst the race to the bottom on cell and module pricing driven by fierce supply side market competition. PV manufacturers can no longer count on economies of scale and incremental process improvements to attain profit in the face of competitive pricing pressures. Manufacturers need to differentiate their product by delivering better performance for the same or lower cost. QD Solar, a University of Toronto spinoff company, will provide this differentiation.
QD Solar’s technology combines efficient silicon solar cells with highly cost-effective infrared solar cells in a hybrid architecture to harvest more of the solar spectrum than silicon alone. At a minimum cost, the silicon solar cell efficiency is boosted by an additional 4 power points.
The basis of QD Solar’s technology is colloidal quantum dots. These materials are nanometer-sized semiconductor particles whose bandgap can be tuned from the visible to the infrared by changing the particle size. The quantum dots are processed from solution, are compatible with high-throughput, cost-effective roll-to-roll processing technologies, and are inorganic, thus inherently more light- and air-stable than polymers.
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