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SUNV Sunovia and EPIR Announce Unprecedented Breakthrough
Sunovia and EPIR Announce Unprecedented Breakthrough in the Manufacturing of Single Crystalline Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) on Silicon
Thursday May 8, 12:24 pm ET
SARASOTA, Fla., May 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sunovia Energy Technologies, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: SUNV) and EPIR Technologies, Inc. (EPIR) are pleased to announce an unprecedented breakthrough in the manufacturing of Single Crystalline Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on silicon (Si), known as CdTe/Si. The companies have discovered a method to produce single crystalline CdTe/Si more rapidly than ever achieved before in any lab, even for a single isolated sample. The results have been independently validated and are readily reproducible with an extremely high yield and an unprecedented high crystal quality. This breakthrough paves the way for continued progress toward the large-scale manufacturing and commercialization of single crystalline epitaxial CdTe/Si, which the companies believe, as of today, has no competitors. This breakthrough again demonstrates the companies' continuing role as the leading developers of advanced night vision materials and ultra-high-efficiency solar cells based on CdTe/Si.
This breakthrough validates the first reproducible, high-yield growth of high-quality CdTe/Si suitable for commercial manufacturing. The companies believe that this development alone will greatly reduce the cost of high-efficiency CdTe-based solar cells and night vision detectors and cameras. This breakthrough also dramatically improved the crystal quality of the CdTe produced. It created improvements in the crystal quality of three-inch CdTe wafers more than twice as great as all of the improvements achieved over the last decade. In addition, the improvement in uniformity across the wafer is even more striking than the great improvement in crystal quality at the center of the wafer. This indicates a high likelihood of being able to move rapidly to the commercial large-scale manufacturing of even larger area CdTe/Si wafers, further lowering costs and speeding up production. This is of prodigious importance to the companies' solar cell manufacturing program because that program has single crystal CdTe/Si as its fundamental base for creating even more efficient cells.
As explained in previous Sunovia press releases, the development of high-efficiency infrared materials and devices and that of photovoltaic (PV) devices are very similar, except that infrared device manufacturing is much more precise and difficult.
"I am very pleased for the shareholders and investors of Sunovia and EPIR to announce this unprecedented breakthrough," stated Dr. Siva Sivananthan, President and CEO of EPIR Technologies, Inc. "This accomplishment is a direct reflection of the incredible talent at EPIR, and the 'team first' attitude we share with Sunovia," added Sivananthan.
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