UH Mānoa startup among national solar innovation semifinalists

A University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa startup is shining in a national competition designed to energize U.S. solar manufacturing. Hawaiʻi Innovation Lab is among 20 teams representing 12 states that have been selected to advance into the semifinals of the American-Made Solar Prize, a $3 million competition funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Each team won $50,000 and will continue to the next phase of competition.

The team is developing a low-cost liquid metal coating for concentrated solar power (CSP) polymeric mirrors. Current CSP technology uses bulky and costly glass mirrors. As a lighter alternative, polymeric mirror film is cheaper than glass mirrors, yet expensive to manufacture. Hawaiʻi Innovation Lab is working to develop a room temperature liquid-metal thin-film deposition technique and CSP polymeric mirror film that will reduce expenditures by 80% and film cost by 50%.

The Hawaiʻi Innovation Lab team consists of Arif Rahman, team captain and UH Mānoa electrical engineering postdoctoral fellow; Aaron Ohta, UH Mānoa electrical engineering professor; and Kareem Elassy, UH Mānoa electrical engineering PhD graduate, and research and development integration engineer at Intel.

Read the full story from University of Hawai’i here.