Joel Jean, Ph.D. ’17 spent two years researching the future of Solar Energy in a report released by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) 2015. He is working to build that future as the CEO of Swift Solar, a startup creating light solar panels based on perovskite semiconductors.
It’s been a challenging way. However, Jean states that his primary motivation, shared with five of his co-founders, is the need to combat the climate crisis. “The entire world is beginning to recognize the danger of climate change, and there are numerous benefits for renewable energy sources. This is why we see immense potential for energies,” he says.
Max Hoerantner, co-founder and Swift Solar’s vice president for engineering, agrees. “It’s highly motivating to have the opportunity to put a dent into the climate change crisis with the technology that we’ve developed during our PhDs and postdocs.”
The company’s international group of founders – from Austria, Netherlands, Austria, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States- has created an item that can significantly boost the utilization of solar power. It’s a light, efficient, cheap, and scalable solar cell.
Jean and Hoerantner have the experience of forming a solar research team that they have gained through their work in GridEdge Solar, an interdisciplinary MIT research center working towards scalable solar. It is supported through Tata Trusts. Tata Trusts and run out of MITEI’s Tata Center for Technology and Design.
“The inventions and technical advancements of Swift Solar have the opportunity to revolutionize the format of solar photovoltaic technology,” declares Vladimir Bulovic who is the Fariborz Maseeh (1990) professor of Emerging Technology in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Director of MIT.nano and a scientist advisor to Swift Solar.
Tandem photovoltaics
The product starts with perovskites, a group of cheap, plentiful materials that excel in absorbing light and emitting it, thereby making them ideal semiconductors to convert solar energy.
Utilizing perovskites to generate solar energy was popular about ten years ago because the material is more efficient in turning sunlight into electricity than the crystalline silicon commonly used in solar panels currently. They’re also light and pliable, whereas the crystalline silicon is so fragile it requires rigid protection by rigid glass, resulting in most solar panels today being similar to the size and weight of an outdoor door.
Many entrepreneurs and researchers have been rushing to take advantage of the advantages of these technologies, but Swift Solar has two core technologies that its founders view as competitive advantages. They are first using the two perovskite layers in tandem to improve efficiency. “We’re putting two perovskite solar cells stacked on each other, each absorbing different parts of the spectrum,” Hoerantner explains. In addition, Swift Solar employs a proprietary scaled deposition process to make perovskite film, which helps reduce manufacturing costs.
“We’re one of the few companies to focus specifically on the high performance all-perovskite tandems. They’re difficult to create however we believe it’s the direction that market ultimately going to be,” Jean says.
“Our technologies enable much cheaper and more ubiquitous solar power through cheaper production, reduced installation costs, and more power per unit area,” says Sam Stranks, co-founder and chief scientific advisor of Swift Solar as well as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “Other commercial solar photovoltaic technologies can do one or the other [providing either high power or light weight and flexibility], but not both.”
Bulovic states that technology isn’t the sole reason that he believes the company impacts the energy industry. “The success of a startup is initiated by the quality of the first technical ideas but is sustained by the quality of the team that builds and grows the technology,” Bulovic states. “Swift Solar’s team is extraordinary.”
The co-founders have earned six PhDs, four Forbes 30 under 30 awards, and more than 80.000 references. Four of them – Tomas Leijtens Giles Eperon, Hoerantner, and Stranks — earned their doctorates from Oxford University in the United Kingdom, where they worked with one the first pioneers in perovskite photovoltaics. His name is Prof. Henry Snaith. Stranks then moved to MIT to collaborate with Bulovic, who is acknowledged as a leading expert in the next generation of photovoltaics and an experienced businessman. (Bulovic is a co-inventor on several patents that the company licenses to MIT.)
Stranks met Jean at MIT and MIT, at MIT, where Hoerantner then completed postdoc work with GridEdge Solar. Sixth co-founder Kevin Bush completed his Ph.D. at Stanford, where Leijtens was a postdoc in collaboration with professor Michael McGehee, another leading perovskite researcher who was also a consultant to Swift. The thing that brought them all together was the need to combat the issue of climate change.
“We were all independently thinking about how we could impact climate change using solar technology, and a startup seemed like the only real direction that could have an impact at the scale the climate demands,” Jean says. The group first met in a Google Hangouts session spanning three time zones at the beginning of 2016. Swift Solar was officially launched in November 2017.
MITEI study
Surprisingly, Jean claims that his research in “The Future of Solar Energy–rather than the work he did in the lab, contributed most to his involvement in the creation of Swift Solar. Swift Solar. The study team comprising thirty experts, Jean Bulovic and Jean Bulovic, studied the possibility of increasing solar generating capacity to a multi-terawatt scale at midcentury. They concluded that the primary objective of U.S. solar policy should be to lay the foundation for a massive expansion of solar power in the coming decades.
“I did research on quantum dots and organic solar cell throughout the course of my Ph.D., but I also was studying economics and policy on energy as well as talking with entrepreneurs and contemplating the steps needed to be successful in the solar market. This made me less committed to one particular technology,” Jean says.
Jean’s research led to a widely-cited study, ” Pathways for Solar Photovoltaics” in Energy & Environmental Science (2015), and his role as the founding leader of GridEdge Solar. “Technical advancements and insights gained in this program helped launch Swift Solar as a hub for novel lightweight solar technology,” Bulovic adds.
Swift Solar has also benefited from the entrepreneurial community at MIT, Jean says, noting that he attended 15.366 MIT Energy Ventures, the class that focused on starting companies and received assistance through the Venture Mentoring Service. “There were a lot of experiences like that that have really informed where we’re going as a company,” Jean declares.
Stranks adds, “MIT offered a stimulating space to explore commercialization ideas simultaneously with the development of our technology. There are very few places that could combine both as effectively.”
Swift Solar raised its first initial round of funding in 2018 and relocated to the Bay Area of California last summer after one year at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Swift Solar is currently trying to improve its manufacturing procedures to grow its technology from the lab into the market.
The company’s founders claim their primary aim is to design specific high-performance products that require high efficiency and lightweight, like drones are unmanned and various mobile apps. “Wherever there is a need for solar energy and lightweight panels that can be deployed flexibly, our products will find a good use,” Hoerantner declares.
It will take some time to scale up. However, team members agree that the risks associated with climate change make the work worthwhile.
“My vision is that we will be able to grow quickly and efficiently to realize our first products within the next two years, and to supply panels for rooftop and utility-scale solar applications in the longer term, helping the world rapidly transform to an electrified, low-carbon future,” Stranks says.