Developing new UK packaging capability for highly miniaturised, compound semiconductor-based photovoltaic components to enable autonomous and sustainable IoT at scale

Lightricity has developed and commercialised world leading efficiency photovoltaic (PV) technology which is up to 6x better at harvesting energy than commercially available silicon-based PV. This renewable energy source can enable the IoT to overcome the barriers of battery-related waste and maintenance costs thus enabling it to be more scalable and sustainable.

The PV components are manufactured in a distributed, outsourced supply chain, as is typical in the semiconductor industry. In recent years Lightricity have sought to migrate manufacturing of its PV component and systems to Europe and the UK in order to address a range of shortcomings of offshore production including responsiveness for customisation and disruptions of supply. We have options for all stages of manufacture in Europe and the UK now other than the assembly packaging and test step. Through a feasibility stage study, we worked with various UK packaging houses to investigate assembly, packaging and test capabilities and limitations. We have established that our packaging requirements can be addressed in the UK by a combination of transfer of more established techniques from Asia and the development of novel capabilities here in the UK. Working with Alter Technology we identified routes to developing the required flexibility in dam-and-fill encapsulation for the range of our custom designed PV products. In this new project we need to work with Alter further to transfer clear moulding techniques for more standardised, lower-cost, high-volume mass-market production as well as co-develop innovative new methods which go beyond the current state-of-the-art and would enable mass manufacture of new product categories. This will bridge the gap from UK's strength in compound semiconductor research to actual commercial volume production and will allow Lightricity to complete its supply chain migration from Asia to UK and Europe.

Alter Technology UK have established a volume production line for plastic encapsulated packages using opaque (black) moulding compound. This project will enable Alter to further develop this capability with clear moulding techniques and materials for optical components. Alter's automated toolset combined with panel array moulding, offer scale-up to cost effective and flexible UK volume manufacture of packaged PV in various configurations for different applications for Lightricity, underpinning global opportunities to lead the scalable and sustainable deployment of the IoT. It will also give Alter the capability to address a much wider range of customer packaging requirements for optical devices e.g. in LED arrays and optical sensors used for industrial and medical applications.