"We now have the funds to fully develop our core technology and bring it to market," said Howard Berke, Konarka chairman. "The current round of financing has provided us with more than operating capital; our new corporate investors offer important expertise in the fields of energy, chemicals and materials."
Draper Fisher Jurvetson led the funding round, with fellow venture capital firms Zero Stage Capital, Ardesta and NextGen Partners and corporates ChevronTexaco and Eastman Chemical Company also participating.
Konarka says that it will initially focus on commercializing photovoltaic products based on low-cost, scalable processing of dye-sensitized, cold-sintered titanium dioxide nanoparticles. The start-up, which was founded in June 2001, uses polymers rather than glass as the foundation for its solar cells, which means that they are lightweight and portable.
Based in Lowell, Massachusetts, Konarka holds exclusive worldwide rights to the University of Massachusetts' nanomaterials cold sintering technology. In August the company became the first US licensee for dye-sensitized solar-cell technology from the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) in Switzerland.