Noak, a new spin-off from imec and UHasselt, has closed a €5 million seed round to accelerate the industrialization of perovskite-silicon tandem photovoltaics. The funding comes from the Helios Foundation, Nuhma and V2HFin and is intended to move the technology from research toward scalable manufacturing in Europe.
The company is based on an IP1. image placement2. Internet protocolInterface or communications concept for transmitting data between devices and systems.3. Intellectual PropertyIP denotes licensable semiconductor design blocks or technology elements. portfolio from imec and UHasselt and on more than a decade of work at IUMAT and within EnergyVille. Its core technology combines silicon with a perovskite layer stack developed through proprietary chemical compositions and scalable deposition techniques. The goal is to push tandem-cell efficiency beyond the practical 27–28% limit associated with conventional silicon, with tandem concepts described as capable of reaching 30–35% conversion efficiency.
A central technical issue for perovskite-silicon tandems is long-term stability under real operating conditions. To address this, imec and UHasselt have accumulated five years of outdoor operation data from more than 10 test sites on three continents. The test campaign covered exposure to intense sunlight, heavy rain, extreme heat and sub-zero temperatures across Asia, Europe and North America. Noak plans to use this dataset as the basis for demonstrating stability and performance at scale, both of which are critical for bankability and commercialization.
Beyond the absorber stack, Noak is also developing a proprietary 3D woven back-contact foil that places electrical connections on the rear side of the cell. This approach eliminates front-side metallization, reducing shading losses and improving material efficiency, while also simplifying recycling at end of life.
The tandem architecture can additionally be divided into smaller sub-cells connected in series and parallel. That design flexibility is intended to cut metal consumption further and reduce dependence on expensive and rare metals. Noak describes the cell and module architecture as a way to lower critical material usage while improving circularity.
Circularity is built into the company’s design targets through principles such as design for disassembly and debonding on demand. Noak also plans to work with its supply chain toward certified recycled metals so that sustainability is integrated from the first commercial products.
The new capital will be used to advance development at EnergyVille in Genk and to prepare scale-up with gigawatt manufacturing partnerships. The company’s aim is to combine higher-efficiency PVprocess vacuum with lower material intensity and a manufacturing path that is compatible with large-scale European production.