NanoGram Corporation Receives Award from US Department of Energy Recognizing Photovoltaic Technology Innovation

NanoGram Corporation, a leading developer and licensor of core advanced materials process technology, tools and solutions for optical, electronic and energy applications, has been awarded an Energy Innovator Award from the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The award recognizes businesses, individuals and governmental agencies that have successfully developed or deployed energy efficiency and/or renewable energy technologies, services or policies.

“We are happy to recognize NanoGram’s work with the Energy Innovator Award,” said Paul Dickerson, chief operating officer at the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. “Moving energy innovations from the lab to the market is a key way to increase our energy security and mitigate climate change.”

NanoGram is developing a breakthrough crystalline silicon-based solar module manufacturing process that dramatically reduces module cost to the level of thin film photovoltaics while delivering high efficiency. The process leverages NanoGram’s proprietary laser reactive deposition (LRD(tm)) technique, which drives down PV module costs by reducing silicon consumption to less than 25 percent compared to typical wafer-based approaches. Significant cost reductions generated using this approach are expected to bring module costs well below $1.00/Wp when high volume manufacturing production levels are reached in 2012.

An R&D pilot plant is currently under construction at NanoGram’s headquarter facilities in Milpitas, CA, and is expected to generate approximately 25 new high-tech jobs.

“I congratulate NanoGram on receiving the Department of Energy’s Energy Innovator Award,” said US Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA). “I have long been a supporter of solar energy, and NanoGram’s work on photovoltaic technology will help to expand the use of solar energy in the United States. The company’s approach addresses both the supply and demand issues that face solar energy — their technology will increase the manufacturing throughput of factories, increasing supply, and it will decrease the cost to make panels, thus making solar more attractive to a greater number of consumers. Work like this is essential to bringing solar energy into widespread use, and I am proud that it is being done in Silicon Valley, in California’s 15th Congressional District.”

“On behalf of NanoGram, I would like to thank the Department of Energy for this award and Congressman Mike Honda for his leadership on renewable energy issues,” said NanoGram president and CEO Dr. Kieran Drain. “Working together, the private sector and the government can provide our nation with affordable home-grown renewable energy.”

NanoGram’s photovoltaic innovations are part of the company’s growing intellectual property assets for Cleantech applications that include solar, flat panel and flexible displays, solid state lighting, lithium-ion batteries, and printed electronics.