Magnolia Solar has been awarded the Phase I Small Business Innovation Research/ Small Business Technology Transfer award by NASA for developmental work on advanced photovoltaic systems.
The award would be a boost to the research and development activities at Magnolia in providing sophisticated photovoltaic systems. These photovoltaic systems would be deployed in NASA’s space exploration and science missions. The award money for Phase I was $100,000 for a period of six months and the Phase II proposal is yet to be submitted to NASA.
The Chief Technical Officer of Magnolia noted that though standard multi-junction solar cells have high conversion efficiencies they are capable of operating only in select environments. He further explained that the new thin-film photovoltaic cells are being designed to give increased voltage and current outputs. He added that these single junction III-V cells would have an active region made up of quantum structures and would be implementing light-trapping strategies.
Dr. Ashok K. Sood, the CEO of Magnolia, mentioned that they were focused on developing their core technologies so as to improve the performance of thin-film solar cells which are targeting commercial and defence sectors. In the words of Sood, the first phase of the photovoltaic cell development was aimed at providing cells with high conversion efficiency available at low costs. Sood was of the opinion that implementation of photovoltaic cells capable of operating under various conditions the performance of terrestrial CPV systems increases considerably.
Source: http://www.magnoliasolar.com/