Solar Silicon Purifier Snags $20M
Even though silicon is one of the most abundant materials in the world, pure silicon — the kind used in solar cells — is hard to come by. In fact the growing demand for pure silicon led Ontario-based solar silicon purification startup 6N Silicon to disclose today that it has raised another $20 million (that’s U.S. dollars) in a second-round financing. The funding was led by Good Energies; returning Ventures West Management and Yaletown Venture Partners participated as well.
6N’s goal is to be the cheapest source of solar-grade polysilicon, an industry the company estimates will grow to $10.4 billion by 2010. 6N says their silicon-purifying process is far cheaper than the existing process used in semiconductor manufacturing. Currently 6N boosts its silicon purity by mixing in scrap from semiconductor makers that require a purity level for chipmaking on the parts-per-billion scale, while solar only needs to be so many parts-per-million pure. But 6N hopes to not need the high-quality slag for much longer.
“6N’s process will take significantly less time to build a facility and the production costs will be a fraction of the ‘Siemens process,’” the traditional purifying technique, 6N founder Scott Nichol explained to us last July. The company has made great strides since then, including getting up a production line that’s producing mixable-grade silicon at a rate of 70 tons per year running at a single shift.
6N aims to eventually produce solar-grade silicon without mixing in the high-grade chip waste. “We’re confident we can get to a pure grade in the next year or so,” David Dunnison, 6N’s VP of business development, told us.
