France-based specialty chemicals company Rhodia has made its first corporate venturing deal by joining a consortium investing £4.5m ($7m) in Eight19, a UK-based maker of flexible solar panels formed by the two professors behind organic semiconductor company Plastic Logic.
Cambridge Enterprise, the University of Cambridge’s commercialisation office, and UK government-backed investment group Carbon Trust also joined the consortium backing Eight19.
The portfolio company was spun out from the Carbon Trust’s Cambridge University-TTP Advanced Photovoltaic Research Accelerator to tap into a photovoltaic market expected to grow at 20% to 30% per year.
Pascal Juery, group executive vice-president of Rhodia, said: "This investment is perfectly in line with our strategy to explore new promising market segments fitting with our sustainable development commitment. Furthermore, we are convinced that open innovation is key to leverage our research and development capability. We are happy to work in close partnership with prominent scientists to develop this breakthrough technology."
Rhodia’s spokeswoman said Eight19 was "our only move to date into this type of investment".
Eight19, so called as it takes 8 minutes and 19 seconds for light to travel from the sun to the earth, has been created in partnership with professors Sir Richard Friend and Henning Sirringhaus, who together developed Plastic Logic, and professor Neil Greenham of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and technology development company TTP.
As with Plastic Logic, and previously Cambridge Display Technology for light-emitting diodes, Eight19 uses organic technology to make photovoltaic panels.
Eight19’s focus on the low cost potential of solar cells made with semiconducting plastics (also known as organic photovoltaics, or OPV) is built on the Cavendish Laboratory’s capability to develop techniques for fabricating large scale plastic electronic devices on flexible materials using roll-to-roll processes.
Friend said: "Solar cells made with organic semiconductors work very differently to those made with silicon and are closer in operating principle to photosynthesis in green plants."
The market for organic solar cells has the potential to reach $500m by 2015 and to grow four-fold to $2bn by 2020 and could save up to 900 million tonnes of CO2 by 2050 – some 1.5 times the UK’s current annual emissions, Eight19 said.
Robert Trezona, head of research and development at the Carbon Trust, said: "The launch of Eight19 and the deployment of low cost organic solar cells could help to revolutionise solar power production by opening up new markets. Cost reduction through the development of advanced technology and innovative design are key to driving forward mass production and making solar power more affordable."