MARKUS BECK, CTO, JOINS GROWING SOLEXANT ‘DREAM TEAM’

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Just weeks after announcing James Woolsey, ex-Director of the CIA, joined the Board, Solexant is now announcing that Dr. Markus Beck has joined the company as the Chief Technology Officer.  Dr. Beck will be guiding the company’s advances in CIGS (copper indium gallium arsenide) PV technology and manufacturing.  “Markus is not just an industry veteran, he is considered by many to be one of the top three CIGS technologists in the world.  In our chosen area, co-evaporation, many consider him, as I do, #1 in the world” said Solexant CEO, Brad Mattson.

Most recently, Beck served as vice president of the PV Development Team at Samsung, but his career in CIGS spans over 25 years. Prior to Samsung, Beck was Chief Technologist at First Solar, the world’s largest thin film manufacturer, where his focus was on their next generation high volume CIGS manufacturing.  Dr. Beck also served as CTO at Solyndra where he led the CIGS effort and developed one of the highest rate, highest efficiency CIGS technologies in the world.  Prior to that Beck served as Chief Scientist at GTI Inc., senior scientist at Global Solar Energy, and held a research sabbatical with the CIS team at the NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory). 

Dr. Beck holds a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada, and has authored more than thirty patent applications encompassing the areas of thin film deposition processes, metrology and process control as well as photovoltaic product design. As a subject matter expert of ANSI US-TAG and IEC TC82 WG2; he is actively engaged in drafting various PV standards.  He has served on numerous Department of Energy PV R&D as well as manufacturing grant application review boards, and as a subject matter expert for the peer review journal Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells since 2006.  In 2012 Dr. Beck was appointed to the editorial board of the peer review journal Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells.

Mattson added, “With the addition of Marcus Beck, we significantly deepen our bench of expertise in co-evap CIGS, and set ourselves up to lead the commercialization of this technology in the gigawatt era of Solar 2.0.”

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About Solexant Corp. and its Dream Team

Solexant Corp is based in San Jose, California, where it produces thin film solar cells that incorporate high efficiency PV materials on very high speed equipment.  This technology platform of high efficiency and high speed will dramatically reduce manufacturing costs in the coming gigawatt era of Solar 2.0. Solexant has been named by London’s Guardian as a Global Cleantech 100 company and won Annual 100 Award recognition from R&D Magazine.

Recently “restarting” the company and coming out of stealth mode , Solexant CEO, Mattson tripled the company’s R&D budget, pulled the plug on a 100-megawatt Oregon factory, acquired Wakonda, focused everything on reducing the costs and migrated the Company to the current co-evaporated CIGS platform. 

Wakonda Technologies founder and CEO, Les Fritzemeier, joined Solexant a year ago as its executive vice president spearheading all aspects of program implementation and business development into both commercial and government sectors.

Robert Wendt, former CTO, Vice President of Engineering and Technology Officer at XSunX, joined Solexant 9 months ago as vice president of process and equipment development, including development of all thin film layers, cell current collection, grid interconnect technology, module encapsulation, and reliability. 

The company recently announced that R. James Woolsey, a seasoned veteran of Washington and Silicon Valley, has joined the board of directors of Solexant

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