Nexwafe

NexWafe is Germany-based wafer manufacturer that was spun out from Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in 2015 and is a member of the Ultra Low-Carbon Solar Alliance, Solar Power Europe, and the European Solar Manufacturing Council.

It designs, develops and is ramping into production a proprietary process to produce ultra-thin, high-efficiency, monocrystalline, low-carbon footprint solar wafers to make photovoltaics more sustainable and efficient. Fully compatible with conventional solar cell manufacturing, NexWafe offers a 40% reduction in energy consumption during manufacturing. NexWafe’s continuous, direct gas-to-wafer manufacturing process also minimizes waste, resulting in wafers that are less expensive than conventional wafers. NexWafe’s in-line, ultra-scalable process leapfrogs current barriers in the cost reduction roadmap and inherently supports the industry’s extraordinary growth as the transition to solar power accelerates worldwide. 

In 2024, Nexwafe said that a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell it developed in partnership with the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) has achieved a power conversion efficiency of 28.9%. The tandem perovskite 2-junction cells used NexWafe’s EpiNex wafers and demonstrated their potential for advanced solar technologies. The company stated that with superior smoothness at the nano-scale, EpiNex wafers provide the ideal platform for the next generation of low-cost, solution-processed tandem perovskite cells.