Aurora Solar Technologies (AST) has secured a major R&D grant from the National Research Council of Canada and two new patent grants.
These R&D and patent grants collectively add value to the company’s Intellectual Property portfolio and will also assist the company to increase the commercial market value of its new product line for manufacturing process analysis and control.
The R&D grant, totalling $250,000, is from the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP). This grant, entitled “Industry 4.0 Data Aggregation and Analysis System for Solar Cells Manufacturing”, will support advancement of the data science technology that underpins Aurora’s Insight production-line analysis product. Insight will make it faster, easier and less expensive for customers to find and act on yield-increasing opportunities in the manufacturing facility, in order to significantly improve their profitability.
In addition to the above R&D grant, the Company recently received two patent grants related to its established “DM” infrared-based inline measurement technology. European patent No. 2567217 “Non-Contact Measurement of the Dopant Content of Semiconductor Layers” extends the protection of our core Intellectual Property to the European Union. United States patent No. 10,386,310 “System for Measuring Levels of Radiation Reflecting from Semiconductor Material for Use in Measuring the Dopant Content Thereof” deepens our protection to include the latest version of the technology and continues protection until 2035.