Draft:Exeger Operations AB

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  • Comment: Wikipedia articles require recent independent secondary sources with in depth coverage of the subjects. Press releases and the company's research publications are not secondary sources.
    If decent sources are added to the article, feel free to ping my talk page once you've resubmitted the article for review. Stuartyeates (talk) 05:47, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment: The writing is confused and unorganized, and links like this are just press releases. This needs serious cleanup. Drmies (talk) 12:41, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment: Revdel notes:
    I'm not sure if I got the starting point of the del range right.
    This seems to include content from 7 different sources, only 3 of which are cited in the revdel template.
    Probably need to run copyvio detector again, to check it's now clean.
    Thanks! DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:03, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment: Youtube videos and niche awards do not constitute widespread in-depth media coverage. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 05:34, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
Exeger Operations AB
FormerlyNLAB Solar
ISINSE0012506905
IndustrySolar cell technology
Founded2009
Headquarters
Stockholm
,
Sweden
BrandsPowerfoyle
Total assetsSEKm 974,3
Number of employees
178 (2022)
Websitehttps://www.exeger.com/

Exeger Operations AB is a Swedish green technology company active in solar cell technology. It's owned by Exeger Sweden AB (96.39 %) and SoftBank Group (3,61 %). It's located in Stockholm, Sweden. It has subsidiries in the Netherlands and in Hongkong.

Exeger works with research and development of solar cells, and manufactures dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC or DSC) products based on Grätzel cell technology. Exeger owns 230 global patents..[1]

The company engages solely in business-to-business sales. Powerfoyle solar cells can be integrated with products from other manufacturers of products for InternetOfThings, smart homes as well as in consumer electronics like speakers, headphones, remote controls etc. It can also be part of a surface, e.g. on clothes or bags.

There a two versions of Powerfoyle: Powerfoyle Hybrid and Powerfoyle Indoor. Hybrid is flexible and useful where light environments and light conditions vary. Powerfoyle Indoor is primary aimed at low light level environments, like indoors spaces.

Funding and loans[edit]

Previous fundings include investments from Fortum (2016), Softbank (2019), AMF - Sweden's third biggest pension fund (2019), Swedbank (2021).[2][3], SEB Investment Management (2022) and Italian insurance company Generali (2023).[1]

In Q2 2021 Exeger received a loan from Swedish Export Credit Corporation. In October 2023 the European Investment Bank (EIB) opened an evaluation case, where if approved Exeger has the chance to receive a loan of 35 million euros to scale up its production capacity of solar cells.

EKN, The Swedish Export Credit Agency, an authority with the task of promoting Swedish exports by offering insurance to exporting companies, has supported Exeger on several occasions.[4]

Business acquisitions[edit]

In 2021 Exeger invested in MAYHT, which was later sold. Its subsidiry Intivation was acquired in 2021.[5]

Chemistry research[edit]

Besides analysis of different solar cell material and topologies, scientists also strive to find ways of comparing different technologies. To achieve this researchers look for different standardization measures, like those in the Best research-cell efficiency chart, published by National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). It shows that PCE performance of different types of solar cell like dye-sensitized solar cells has improved over time.[6]

The original DSSC efficiency in 1991 was less than 8 %.[7]. In 2021 the magazine Nature published an article by several scientists including Mikael Grätzel. The article describes the research on strategies for improvement of the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of co-sensitized[8] solar cells. [9]

Recently, DSCs were found to exhibit an outstanding feature of impressive PCEs over 30 % under indoor lighting, superior to amorphous silicon and other thin film semiconductor PV technologies. Thus, they are very promising to serve as power sources to charge portable consumer electronics and sensors. This scenario is being played out, e.g., by the Swedish company Exeger, which is producing flexible DSCs integrated into tablets or earphones to cover their entire energy consumption.

Exeger operations is based on research mainly carried out by PhD Henrik Lindström, CTO at Exeger. Dr Lindström has published severals scientific papers.[10] He has previously worked with research at Uppsala University[11], and EPFL in Lausanne.Switzerland, and later at National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan.

Exeger collaborates with academic institutions like the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH, Sweden)[12], Uppsala University (Sweden) and EPFL (Switzerland.). The Department of Chemistry at KTH has decribed the kind of research and knowledge that is required to be able to design and build functional and efficient photovoltaic solar cells based on photosynthesis: [13]

Solar cells involve absorption of light, leading to separation of charges that can be used in electrical devices. The light absorbing properties of molecules and nanoparticles are modelled to understand the key properties required for efficient lossless light induced charge separation.

Other topics that are studied by academic institutions are solar cell stability and degradation of these over time.

Exeger and KTH have also researched paths for improving the manufacturing process..[14]

Powerfoyle solar cells[edit]

Powerfoyle harvest all forms of light, both artificial and natural light, to charge and power devices with clean, endless energy. Its solar cell technology can convert all forms of light into electrical power, even light from indoor lighting. The technology is inspired by photosynthesis. Powerfoyle contains a dye that converts light energy into electrical energy.

In a conventional dye-sensitized solar cell sunlight meets a light-sensitive dye, which then releases electrons. These are collected by another material, an electron scavenger. At the same time, negative charges migrate from an electrolyte into the dye and regenerate it. Connected to two electrodes, the system generates electricity. In comparison to previous dye-sensitized solar cells Powerfoyle can conduct electricity around 1,000 times better.

Powerfoyle uses an entirely new substrate. This substrate, on which the layers are applied, lies at the center of the cell. Plus and minus contacts are printed on each side respectively. It's a very lightweight solar cell - all the active layers are on this texture. During production, the active materials of the solar cell are liquid at first. That makes application very easy. They're printed on, layer by layer. Despite its low weight, the substrate itself is very stable. It is chemically inert and highly heat resistant - important during the production process.

The photovoltaic material Powerfoyle solar cell is thin, as little as 1,3 mm. It has no silver conductors. It has an electrode material with 1000x higher conductivity than the standard ITO texture.

The texture of the Powerfoyle solar cells can be bended. These solar cells can be printed in any shape. The surfaces can look and feel like leather, brushed steel, or wood.

Technology collaborations[edit]

Exeger is a part of Qualcomm's Extension Program [15], participating in technology integration based on Qualcomm's Bluetooth SoC platforms. The program helps hardware manufacturers and software developers to improve how their products connect to each other, and to establish features lika plug-and-play. The members can also share information, as well as to test and adopt new solutions.

Integration of Powerfoyle covers e.g. energy harvesting and boost converters in collaboration with technology partners like Matrix Industries, Nordic Semiconductor, e-peas, Atmosic Technologies, EM Microelectronic[16] and NGK.

Other collaborations are based on IoT equipment and battery life improvements, as with Nichicon, Nisshinbo Micro Devices or Semtech.[17][18] As a result, IoT sensors, IC boards, wireless products, rechargable batteries etc. have access to constant power, and can safely control other integrated electronic devices, as well as send and receive status data or metrics.

For its technology partners, Exeger has in collaboration with Mobile Interaction created a Software Development Kit (SDK).

Manufacturing[edit]

Exeger has 2 factories in Stockholm, Sweden. They have been setup in collaboration with ABB in order to automate the production of Exeger's photovoltaic nano-material. ABB provides robots and knowledge about industrial automation to help Exeger scale up its production. ABB also has an option to use Powerfoyle in its own products, e.g. sensors.[19]

Their first factory, Stockholm I, was announced in May 2021. A second factory, called Stockholm II, was announced in November 2021, [20]. It is capable of manufacturing up to 2.5 million m2 printed solar cells per year. The first deliveries from the factory took place in September 2023.

Powerfoyle is produced using abundant materials..

Implementations[edit]

Products containing Powerfoyle include self-charging speakers, headphones[21][22], helmets for bikers, trackers, sensors, and electronic shelf labels.

3M will use Powerfoyle to equip earmuffs which have built-in communications.[23]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Billing, Mimi (July 6, 2023). "Exeger's solar-charging headphone tech is primed to go global". Sifted (backed by Financial Times).
  2. ^ "Softbank-backed Exeger pulls in £27M funding to launch revolutionary self-charging wireless devices". UKTN. 11 May 2021.
  3. ^ "Exeger takes $38M to ramp up production of its flexible solar cells for self-powered gadgets". Techcrunch. May 11, 2021.
  4. ^ "Solar cells from Sweden's Exeger – soon in a headset near you | EKN". www.ekn.se. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
  5. ^ "Amsterdam-based semiconductor startup Intivation acquired by Swedish solar tech firm Exeger | Silicon Canals". 2021-12-16. Retrieved 2023-10-20.
  6. ^ Almora, Osbel; Baran, Derya; Bazan, Guillermo C.; Berger, Christian; Cabrera, Carlos I.; Catchpole, Kylie R.; Erten-Ela, Sule; Guo, Fei; Hauch, Jens; Ho-Baillie, Anita W. Y.; Jacobsson, T. Jesper; Janssen, Rene A. J.; Kirchartz, Thomas; Kopidakis, Nikos; Li, Yongfang (2021-03-18). "Device Performance of Emerging Photovoltaic Materials (Version 1)". Advanced Energy Materials. 11 (11). Bibcode:2021AdEnM..1102774A. doi:10.1002/aenm.202002774. ISSN 1614-6832. S2CID 229453477.
  7. ^ Mammino, Liliana L. (2021-11-17). Green Chemistry and Computational Chemistry: Shared Lessons in Sustainability. Elsevier. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-323-85182-4.
  8. ^ Gatty, M. Gilbert; Pullen, S.; Sheibani, E.; Tian, H.; Ott, S.; Hammarström, L. (2018-06-06). "Direct evidence of catalyst reduction on dye and catalyst co-sensitized NiO photocathodes by mid-infrared transient absorption spectroscopy". Chemical Science. 9 (22): 4983–4991. doi:10.1039/C8SC00990B. ISSN 2041-6539. PMC 5989651. PMID 29938026.
  9. ^ Zhang, Dan; Stojanovic, Marko; Ren, Yameng; Cao, Yiming; Eickemeyer, Felix T.; Socie, Etienne; Vlachopoulos, Nick; Moser, Jacques-E.; Zakeeruddin, Shaik M.; Hagfeldt, Anders; Grätzel, Michael (2021-03-19). "A molecular photosensitizer achieves a Voc of 1.24 V enabling highly efficient and stable dye-sensitized solar cells with copper(II/I)-based electrolyte". Nature Communications. 12 (1): 1777. Bibcode:2021NatCo..12.1777Z. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-21945-3. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 7979847. PMID 33741953.
  10. ^ "Publications by PhD Henrik Lindstrom". ResearchGate. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
  11. ^ "Solar cells. Research on solar electricity concerns new materials and structures". Uppsala University. 7 June 2023. Retrieved 2023-06-07.
  12. ^ "Solar cell performance improves with ion-conducting polymer". KTH. 2013-09-03.
  13. ^ "Energy". KTH. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
  14. ^ Aurelius, Gustaf; Ingvarsson, Mattias (2019). Simulation of Production Flow : A simulation-based approach to evaluate and optimize future production scenarios. KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM).
  15. ^ "Qualcomm Advantage Network Member Directory". Qualcomm. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
  16. ^ Martins, Joao (August 30, 2022). "Exeger Establishes Partnerships to Improve Efficiency of Its Powerfoyle Energy-Harvesting Technology". Audioexpress.
  17. ^ Schelmetic, Tracey E (November 14, 2022). "Exeger Chooses Semtech to Extend IoT Sensor Battery Life". www.iotevolutionworld.com.
  18. ^ "Semtech and Exeger Demonstrate Solar Harvesting Technology for Internet of Things (IoT) Sensors". Businesswire. November 10, 2022.
  19. ^ Shepard, Paul (November 20, 2019). "ABB Partners with Exeger to Speed Up Transition to Clean Energy". EE Power.
  20. ^ "Exeger to build a second solar cell factory in Sweden". Evertiq. Nov 29, 2021.
  21. ^ Farmbrough, Heather. "Look No Leads: How A Swedish Technology Will Revolutionise Consumer Electronics". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-10-12.
  22. ^ Brewer, Jenny (15 April 2020). "This screen printed fabric will soon provide solar power for your headphones, bags and more". www.itsnicethat.com.
  23. ^ Ek, Henrik (2023-10-26). "Svenskt solcellsbolag sluter avtal med Fortune 500-jätte". Dagens industri (in Swedish). Retrieved 2023-10-26.

Category:Energy-saving lighting Category:Solar cells Category:Business-to-business Category:Swedish company stubs

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