The partners have also expanded their materials synthesis and device fabrication facility to 26,000 square feet including 4,000 square feet of clean-room laboratory space. The expanded facility also houses R and D and engineering staff, which has doubled over the past year.

EPIR Technologies is currently servicing more than 20 governmental contracts that represent more than $20 million, including contracts with the Department of Energy, Department of Defense and the Missile Defense Agency.

Sunovia and EPIR have partnered to commercialize a novel approach to photovoltaics that takes advantage of EPIR's world-class expertise in growing high-quality, single-crystal layers of CdTe on silicon. By producing a very high efficiency CdTe/Si solar cell and concentrating the sunlight that strikes it up to 500 times its normal intensity, a significantly higher amount of electricity can be produced in a given area and at a lower cost than traditional photovoltaics.

Dr. Siva Sivananthan, founder and CEO of EPIR Technologies says, "This expanded laboratory and pilot production space will accelerate our already fast-paced R and D efforts. Both our facility expansion and R and D progress are at least 12 months ahead of schedule. In preparation for our first CdTe/Si product, we have designed this facility in a manner that will allow us to transition into pilot production using the same space and equipment. By basing our concentrator solar cells on silicon instead of germanium, as is the norm for the high efficiency III-V concentrator cells produced today, we can use production equipment that the integrated circuit industry has spent years and hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars optimizing."

Carl Smith, Chairman and CEO of Sunovia, stated, "By leveraging the infrared materials and sensor expertise within EPIR Technologies, we have not only expedited the commercialization process for the high-efficiency solar wafers, but have done it at a drastically reduced development cost." Smith added, "The solar modules that we are commercializing are among the most efficient in the world, and can be manufactured at a fraction of the cost of other solar cells. In addition to the solar wafers, EPIR has completed the expansion of its infrared manufacturing capabilities, which has allowed us to aggressively pursue additional customers on the night vision side of the business."

related report
Sunovia and EPIR Announce Completion of Closed Space Sublimation System
Sunovia Energy Technologies and its partner EPIR Technologies have announced that they have completed the design and construction of a closed space sublimation (CSS) system for fabrication of polycrystalline cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cell devices.

According to Dr. Siva Sivananthan, founder and CEO of EPIR Technologies, "We now know that two-junction CdTe on silicon (CdTe/Si) devices can reach efficiencies comparable to those of three-junction III-V solar cells on the market today, so the fabrication of three-junction and inverted three-junction CdTe-based devices have the potential to achieve efficiencies greater than 50 percent. In addition, multi-junction CdTe on Silicon photovoltaic devices can be manufactured at a fraction of the cost of the existing III-V solar cells."

Dr. Sivananthan added, "Our technology combines high quality, single-crystal CdTe with silicon substrates for high-efficiency, two and three-junction solar cells. We already have a baseline silicon solar cell fabrication process in-house that results in over 15 percent efficiency. Setting up the CSS now gives us the baseline CdTe process, which furthers our extensive understanding of II-VI materials and solar cells, and allows us to accelerate the commercialization of our CdTe/Si products."

Dr. Timothy Coutts, former NREL Fellow and founder of the Device Development Group at NREL, stated, "EPIR is well known in the field of infrared detectors and they are now using this expertise to develop a novel photovoltaic technology. This tool gives EPIR state of the art research ability in polycrystalline CdTe in addition to its already industry leading single-crystal CdTe on silicon epitaxial layer growth and device fabrication capabilities. Deposition rates using CSS are very high compared to other thin-film deposition techniques making the CSS process ideal for high volume manufacturing."

Sunovia Energy Technologies and EPIR Technologies are developing an ultra high-efficiency, low cost CdTe on silicon photovoltaic product that is based on single-crystal CdTe instead of the polycrystalline material used in CdTe panels on the market today. The achievement of the 15 percent silicon baseline efficiency is the foundation for the fabrication of much higher efficiency multi-junction single crystal CdTe solar cells.

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