Intel spins off solar cell division into a new company SpectraWatt

Like IBM, which recently tied up with a Tokyo semiconductor firm to manufacture better photovoltaic cells (See: IBM, Japan's TOK tie up for thin film solar cell technology), technology peer Intel too is venturing into similar ''green technology'' in a big way. It just announced that its New Business Initiatives group, an internal project established to foster new development and demand for renewable energy sources, has led to the formation of an independent company called SpectraWatt Inc.

Expected to be finalised in the second quarter of 2008, the deal is funded through a $50-million investment round with Intel's global investment organisation Intel Capital in charge, with further support from Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Cogentrix Energy subsidiary, PCG Asset Management LLC's PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund, and Solon AG, a German solar-panel maker.

Once open for business, SpectraWatt will churn out photovoltaic (PV) cells for solar module producers, aiming to advance PV tech and reduce the cost of solar energy generation. Intel expects to break ground on the Oregon-based facility later this year, and first product shipments are expected by mid-2009. The company will employ about 140 people by the end of 2009.

Engineers in Intel's new-business-initiatives group in Oregon have been working on the effort for several years, led by Andrew Wilson, who will become SpectraWatt's chief executive.

Wilson said the start-up's goal is to reduce the cost and improve the power-generating efficiency of solar cells that are made from silicon. In this matter, Intel's venture differs from the IBM initiative that seeks to focus on copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) cells, more suitable for ''thin film'' applications.

Solar power has become an increasingly crowded field in recent years, but Wilson thinks there's plenty of room for better cells.

"There's just a huge amount of growth if you can get the economics right," he said Monday. "I think the world we leave to our grandchildren will be a very different one from the one we inherited from our grandparents in terms of how we get our energy."

"SpectraWatt is a great example of technology resulting from entrepreneurial efforts inside Intel," Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president, said in a statement. "This is an important investment for Intel Capital in the growing cleantech sector and we look forward to working with the company to support its expansion."

With this move, Intel follows fellow chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor Corp. that had spun off a maker of solar cells called SunPower Corp. that now has a market capitalization of about $7 billion.

Separately, Intel released papers on Tuesday describing developments in semiconductor research, including a technique for packing more data into a memory chip. That approach, called a floating body cell, uses one transistor to store data, compared with six transistors for memory cells now used on Intel microprocessor chips.

Other companies are pursuing the technique, but Intel says it has fabricated floating body cells smaller than others created so far.

Intel's Mike Mayberry, a vice president in technology and manufacturing, says his group hasn't yet assembled the new cells into complete arrays to validate whether they will work in a chip. He indicated that the cells could be a commercial option after several more generations of manufacturing technology have been developed.