Pv Nano Cell Ltd's Business Segments

We are a conductive ink manufacturing company focused on developing, manufacturing, marketing and commercializing conductive inks for digital conductive printing applications (mainly inkjet and aerosol printing technologies). We have developed the Sicrys™ family of single crystal nano-metric conductive inks, which we believe enables a significantly less costly and less wasteful alternative to current screen printing and, in some cases, photolithography processes for PV and PE applications. We began low volume sales of our Sicrys™ silver-based inks for PV applications in 2010 and are in the process of seeking to expand our sales efforts to include sales of Sicrys™ inks for a wide range of PE applications, including for the printing of circuit boards, mobile phone antennas, 3D printed electronic devices, radio-frequency identification chips, sensors and touchscreens, among other digitally printed electronics. We have also developed what we believe is the first available commercially viable copper-based nano-metric ink for mass-production of printed electronics. We believe that copper inks represent a significant improvement over silver-based inks given copper’s significantly lower cost and nearly identical electrical and conductive properties.

PV cells (commonly known as solar cells) are the building blocks of solar module arrays that convert energy from sunlight into electricity. Multiple PV cells in an integrated group, all oriented in one plane, constitute a solar photovoltaic panel or module, and a group of connected modules make up an array. An array of PV cells is capable of converting solar energy into a usable amount of direct current electricity.

Most modern solar cells are made from either crystalline silicon or thin-film semiconductor material. Crystalline silicon cells (representing an estimated 85-90% of the PV cell market) are more efficient at converting sunlight to electricity, but generally have higher manufacturing costs. Thin-film materials are typically less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity, but can be cheaper to manufacture.

A key part of the PV crystalline silicon cell manufacturing process is the metallization of the cell – i.e., laying down metal electrodes to collect the electricity generated by the cell when exposed to sunlight. Typically, the metallization process is completed by the application of a silver paste to the front side and aluminum-silver pastes on the rear side of the cell using a screen printing process. This process is one of the main bottlenecks to reducing the costs of the cells and the cost of electricity produced by the cells due to: high usage of metal (expensive silver), loss of paste in the process (some paste stays in the screens), cell breakage in the printing process (contact printing), wide printed patterns (higher shading of cells, less surface exposed to the light) and limited electrical properties of the pastes. As a result, “grid parity” – a term used to refer to the ability to produce electricity through an alternative energy source (such as solar cells) at a cost that is equal to or lower than the price of purchasing power from the electricity grid – remains elusive and many solar PV systems rely on government subsidies and grants in order to lower the costs of production and approach grid parity.

Printed electronics is a set of methodologies by which electrical devices are printed onto various substrates (i.e., base material) by depositing electrically functional inks (and possibly other additional functional inks such as insulating materials) on the substrate, creating active or passive devices, such as conductors, thin film transistors or resistors. The use of printed electronics presents an opportunity to facilitate widespread, low cost production of electronics for a variety of applications, including notably for use in circuit boards, radio-frequency identification chips, sensors and touchscreens, among other digitally printed electronics.