Perovskite silicon tandem photo voltaic cell expertise is a mouthful, nevertheless it’s principally perovskite crystals layered on high of silicon cells. The mixture captures vitality from the solar extra effectively than conventional silicon cells, creating highly effective photo voltaic panels. That sounds easy sufficient, however designing an environment friendly perovskite silicon tandem photo voltaic cell isn’t straightforward due to its multi-layer structure. A Singapore-based firm known as Cosmos Innovation is making the method extra environment friendly through the use of AI to optimize the design of perovskite silicon tandem photo voltaic cells and is utilizing its tech to construct a self-operating fab.
Cosmos exited stealth at this time with $19.7 million in whole funding, together with a seed spherical of $2.88 million raised in 2020 and a Collection A of $16.8 million from earlier this yr. Its Collection A was led by Xora Innovation, the early-stage deep tech funding platform of Temasek. Individuals included Innovation Endeavors, the enterprise agency co-founded by Eric Schmidt; Two Sigma Ventures; DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis; MIT professor Tomaso Poggio; pure language processing researcher, You.com CEO and AIX Ventures managing companion Richard Sacher; and Western Know-how Investments.
Cosmos depends on Mobius, its AI recipe optimization platform, to speed up the event of its photo voltaic cells. Created by Cosmos, Mobius has been utilized in sectors together with photo voltaic, silicon carbide, superior information heart chips and superior packaging. It’s key to Cosmos’ ambition to create the world’s first self-learning fab within the photo voltaic and semiconductor area. As a substitute of guide, trial-and-error based mostly processes, Mobius makes use of AI to hurry the experimental design, check and iteration loop of semiconductors.
The startup was based in 2020 by CEO Vijay Chandrasekhar and CTO Joel Li. Earlier than Cosmos, Chandrasekhar led an AI effort on the Institute for Infocomm Analysis, a part of the Company of Science, Know-how and Analysis (A*STAR), the place he oversaw 150 individuals and managed a portfolio of AI initiatives with a give attention to semiconductors. Li was former group head on the Photo voltaic Vitality Analysis Institute of Singapore and served as an AI crew lead at A*STAR, main the event of AI options for producers and R&D institutes. The 2 met whereas at A*STAR.
When requested to elucidate perovskite silicon tandem photo voltaic cell expertise in layperson’s phrases, Chandrasekhar and Li mentioned that it replaces typical photo voltaic cells presently in the marketplace. Typical photo voltaic cells use silicon to soak up mild. When layered on high of silicon, perovskite, a crystal that happens in nature or is artifical, captures completely different components of the photo voltaic spectrum. That makes it extra environment friendly than typical photo voltaic cells.
“The large, large, large market alternative is as a result of silicon expertise is reaching its basic limits,” mentioned Chandrasekhar. “There’s an enormous trillion greenback alternative going into the 2030s and we needed to drive the following S curve in photo voltaic, which is perovskite silicon tandem.”
Among the challenges researchers have to unravel earlier than perovskite silicon tandem photo voltaic cell tech might be commercialized embrace stability and scaling up the expertise, says Li.
There are three principal market segments for perovskite silicon tandem photo voltaic cell tech. The primary are residential rooftop panels. Then there’s business and industrial, or panels positioned on high of amenities and warehouses. The third one is energy vegetation that generate electrical energy and feed it into the grid. Cosmos’ founders say one of many benefits of perovskite silicon tandem photo voltaic cell tech is that it takes much less area, since it’s extra environment friendly.
“Each little bit of effectivity goes to maneuver the needle massively on the quantity of electrical energy you’ll be able to generate,” mentioned Chandrasekhar. “Perovskite silicon tandem is disruptive to silicon in these area-constrained purposes.”
Perovskite silicon tandem tech’s multi-layer structure means it’s harder to design, with many various variations. Because of this, researchers want to spend so much of time determining the most effective recipe for peak cell effectivity and stability. Mobius is supposed to take a number of the guesswork out of this course of and make it much less labor-intensive to create cost-effective and high-efficiency photo voltaic cells by determining the appropriate mixture of supplies, processes and structure.
The corporate claims it has already seen a 10x acceleration in course of recipes, together with enhancements in goal efficiency with high semiconductor firms. Cosmos labored on 10 completely different issues with main semiconductor and photo voltaic firms (their names can’t be disclosed) and Li says “we’ve proven time and time once more our AI expertise can speed up course of optimization.” It’s been used on purposes like photo voltaic silicone carbide, entrance finish transistors and chiplets.
Chandrasekhar says Mobius is Cosmos’ key to setting itself aside from rivals within the perovskite silicon tandem area, like Oxford PV and CubicPV, which is backed by Invoice Gates’ Breakthrough Vitality Ventures.
“At this level, there’s an arms race to construct this expertise. That is the only most disruptive shift in photo voltaic because the first silicon photo voltaic cell was invented in Bell Labs 50 years in the past,” he says. “There’s an arms race and massive platform shift, which allows new startups like us to enter the race. There’s a bunch of perovskite silicon tandem startups and naturally the massive incumbents are additionally wanting into it.” However Chandrasekhar added that Cosmos’ benefit is that the corporate started as an AI firm after which determined to construct semiconductors.
Cosmos’ funding is getting used to speed up its R&D course of. Its go-to-market technique focuses on its preliminary pilot clients and the premium finish of the market, together with area-constrained purposes. It’s presently constructing early prototypes. Cosmos can also be engaged on its self-operating fab, which Chandrasekhar describes as Mobius layered on high of {hardware} and is already working in Singapore.
In a quote concerning the funding, Xora Innovation managing director Phil Inagaki mentioned, “Cosmos Innovation has assembled a few of the world’s main minds in AI, semiconductor manufacturing and photo voltaic to create Mobius—the primary AI platform that permits self-learning fabrication of advanced silicon units. The appliance of Mobius to perovskite silicon tandem photo voltaic cells guarantees to ship cheaper, dependable and environment friendly modules on an accelerated timeline.”
