News

1 July 2010

 

CPV cell supplier QuantaSol appoints opto industry veteran as chairman

QuantaSol Ltd of Kingston-upon-Thames, UK, which designs and manufactures strain-balanced quantum-well solar cells, has appointed Ian Jenks as chairman and board member.

Jenks has more than 20 years of experience in technology industries, both as an investor and as a board member of a wide range of operating companies in the USA and Europe, including Altitun, CoreOptics, Crystal Photonics, Digilens, Novalux, Oplink, Symmorphix, Zolo Technologies, and currently Intune Networks. He was also president of the Laser and Fiber Optic groups of Uniphase Inc (now JDS Uniphase), responsible for the management of business operations in the USA, England, Switzerland and The Netherlands. He has also been a general partner with VC firm Crescendo ventures.

“Ian joins the company at an exciting time as we ready ourselves for volume production and our first commercial product launch,” says CEO Chris Shannon. “His track record in driving international businesses, experience with Uniphase and time in Silicon Valley gives Ian the perfect CV to help guide QuantaSol through the next stage of its development,” he adds.

“QuantaSol is pioneering unique, world-beating CPV solar cells that will deliver breakthrough performance improvements and enable the market for this new, lower-cost renewable electricity generating technology to take off and thrive,” believes Jenks. “I look forward to making use of my experience in the company’s key markets to help drive QuantaSol’s growth and commercial success as the company transitions from a start-up developer to revenue generating company.”

In June last year, QuantaSol announced that it had a single-junction photovoltaic device which achieved record energy conversion efficiency of 28.3% at a concentration of greater than 500 suns when independently tested by Fraunhofer ISE. QuantaSol is funded and backed by the Low Carbon Accelerator and Imperial Innovations, and its strain-balanced quantum-well solar cell (SB-QWSC) is believed to be the world’s highest performing single-junction concentrator cell, with the potential to enhance multi-junction cells to record efficiencies. Following continual development to achieve multi-junction cells with higher efficiency, the firm is now targeting volume production, with product launch expected later this year.

Just yesterday, QuantaSol announced management changes (i.e. making the product engineering director the director of product marketing) and recruitments (including CFO and VP of engineering) as part of gearing up for volume production and product launch.

See related item:

QuantaSol gears up for volume production with management restructuring

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