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| | May 17, 2008
6N Silicon
Publisher: Semiconductor Times
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| | 6N Silicon was founded in September 2006 "to become the leading global supplier of solar grade silicon to the solar industry." 6N Silicon's goal is "to be the lowest cost provider of solar grade silicon that does not require blending with high-purity silicon to maintain optimum cell performance."
In July 2007, 6N Silicon secured CDN $6 million in first round financing led by Ventures West and Yaletown Venture Partners. Sustainable Development Technology Canada is also contributing $4 million to a project to develop a pilot line to demonstrate 6N's technology. 6N recently secured up to US $20 million in second round financing led by Good Energies and including Ventures West and Yaletown. The company will use the investment to assemble its first production plant and move into commercial production. The company may consider raising additional equity capital in late 2009 to fund its planned large production expansion. Breakeven is anticipated in 2009. 6N has more than 20 employees, and is actively hiring.
The solar industry has grown at over 30% year-over-year for the past ten years to $19 billion globally and is predicted to continue over the next decade at over 30% per year. The industry grew at approximately 69% this past year. The global market for solar grade silicon feedstock in 2006 was approximately $2.3 billion and is projected to grow to $10.4 billion or higher by 2010, based upon estimated production volumes and pricing reported by Photon Consulting in 2007.
The supply of purified silicon has become a critical competitive and growth limiting issue. In constant short supply, polysilicon is the largest single cost component of most solar modules. In 2006, the demand for primary silicon from the solar industry exceeded the demand from the semiconductor industry.
Adding new polysilicon manufacturing capacity has become a manufacturing bottleneck for the photovoltaic industry. Conventional polysilicon manufacturing is expensive and time-consuming to expand, very energy intensive and has environmental considerations that affect the flexibility of location selection and feedstock management.
The 6N process offers substantial improvements in scale-up-speed, reduced capital cost and reduced operational costs. 6N Silicon's primary differentiation is its proprietary process for purifying inexpensive, readily available metallurgical grade silicon into true solar grade silicon using low cost metallurgical processing. With low capital equipment and production costs, the 6N process scales quickly and easily, and features dramatically lower input energy requirements than conventional silicon purification processes.
6N takes the most basic form of commercially available, impure silicon known as metallurgical grade silicon, and applies metal processing techniques to refine it into a very pure form. The company utilizes equipment that is commonly used in other metal processing industries. This is dramatically different from the current standard vapor deposition process and its high-energy requirements.
Leveraging extensive knowledge from much larger metal processing industries, the process has dramatically lower capital equipment costs, very low production costs, rapid expansion capability, wide flexibility in location, a much smaller footprint and very low environmental impact.
The competitors for purified silicon are the conventional suppliers to the semiconductor industry, including Hemlock Semiconductor, Wacker Chemie, and REC Silicon, as well as several companies that are pursuing alternative approaches. 6N Silicon's primary competitive advantages are the speed of new capacity additions and the low capital cost of the company's processing equipment. Unlike the majority of competitive approaches, 6N Silicon's manufacturing facilities can be assembled within an existing structure rather than constructed on a new site. Other advantages include low manufacturing cost, highlighted by a low energy requirement, and high solar-grade purity levels.
The initial solar products will be mixable materials, primarily for multicrystalline solar cell production. These products will be quickly followed by a solution that can be used in a pure form without mixing and that can be utilized in multicrystalline, monocrystalline, and ribbon cell production.
The company is in active dialog with a number of leading players in the PV industry, and expects to initiate deliveries to these customers before the end of 2008.
Paolo Maccario, CEO (previously CEO of Meridian Technologies of the Fiat Group and CEO of Teksid Aluminum Foundry)
Scott Nichol, Founder, President and CTO (previously Plant Manager and Director of R&D at Cymat and cofounder, VP and GM at The Rand
Corporation)
David Dunnison, VP Business Development (previously CEO of Protexis and Accuzone)
Alain Turenne, Engineering Manager (previously spent over five years at Photowatt)
Fred Oseyn, Controller (most recently a Senior Financial Analyst at Mold-Masters and was Assistant Controller at Cymat)
6074 Shawson Drive
Mississauga, ON L5T 1E6
Canada
Tel: 905.795.7800
Fax: 905.795.7814
www.6nsilicon.com
Reprinted with Permission. Semiconductor Times. www.semiconductortimes.com |
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