Miho Koike in her office in Tohoku University / Photocredit: Tech in Asia
As CEO of Material Concept, she steers the company towards a big breakout in the field
Solar cell makers in China, Taiwan, and Europe have bombarded Miho Koike with product orders. Koike is the CEO of Material Concept, a small solar power development company that is changing the way the world makes solar panels. Nestled away in a Tohoku University research and business center, the company is so hidden and focused on product it does not have a working website. Instead, it depends on Tohoku University web space to broadcast news. Don't worry – this is not a fly-by-night Kickstarter campaign. The product is real, and it is selling.
Traditionally, manufacturers use a gold paste to affix solar cells to the electrodes on solar batteries and panels. Gold, being a valuable commodity, ends up accounting for almost 25 percent of all production costs. Junichi Koike (no relation) developed an alternative copper paste that Miho says is just 1/100th of the cost.
Though the breakthrough was twenty years in the making, with other researchers pursuing the same goal, the real trick that Junichi pulled off is creating a slim barrier to prevent the copper from being absorbed into the silicon used in solar panels. The cost benefits of copper had been known but the material caused silicon to degrade, making it a risky alternative.
This is welcome news to overseas solar companies. Material Concept receives a lot of attention from Europe because the European Union announced a switch over to the bronze standard by 2018. Miho mentions that they are exploring tie-ups with Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers. The talks must be going well because she is looking for new employees who can also speak Chinese.
Although Japan's government made a noisy but faltering push for more solar power, the reality is that Material Concept's clients are mostly outside of Japan. “In Japan only three major companies – Sharp, Kyocera, and Mitsubishi – are producing these solar cells,” she says.
