Brief Description
Silicor Materials was a global leader in the production of solar silicon. The company was headquartered San Jose, California, with a research and development team located in Berlin, Germany.
The organization was founded as a development company in 2006 under the name Calisolar, with the goal of manufacturing low-cost photovoltaic (PV) solar cells from silicon designed specifically for the solar industry (“solar silicon”) rather than electronic-grade polysilicon. Among the company's founding members was solar energy pioneer UC Berkeley Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Eicke Weber, who spent a decade as director of the largest solar energy research institute in Europe, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE.
Supported by venture financing from Hudson Clean Energy Partners, LP, Advanced Technology Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners, the company built its management and engineering teams; in 2009, construction was completed on a 60 MW PV cell production facility, consisting of a vertically integrated ingot, wafer and cell manufacturing line in Sunnyvale, California.
Formerly known as Calisolar, Inc.
Timeline
- 2006. Company founded.
Inventors
Anthony Buonassisi, Matthias Heuer, Andrei Istratov, Matthew Marcus, Matthew Pickett, Eicke Weber