Batteries have transformed electronics, giving us powerful phones, tablets, e-readers, and smart watches. But eventually, every battery runs flat.
Maybe not for long. One startup, RadianX, envisions a world where portable and peripheral devices cut the cord for good without running out of power. The key is a better breed of solar panels.
RadianX has developed a new type of solar material from a family known as perovskites. The material is just as good as existing solar panels outdoors, but twice as good at harvesting light indoors.
“We can harvest any type of photon, whether it’s an outdoor or indoor photon, and make the device last longer — or run forever,” said Josh Douglas, co-founder and COO, TechCrunch.
The indoor efficiency of RadianX’s tech could be the key to unlocking what the company calls “edge energy.” Think of an e-reader that never needs charging or an IoT sensor that never needs a battery change. But as with any new category, unexpected applications may emerge, including long-term robots or wearables that have been held back by limited battery power.
To fund a commercial volume production line, RadianX recently raised $5 million in a seed round led by SOSV and Twynam, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. Other investors include One Small Planet, Sachsen Ventures, Avila VC, California Innovation Fund, quantumEDGE, Riceberg Ventures, and Alumni Ventures. In addition to the seed money, Pacific Union Technology Precision Manufacturing is putting in $4 million in non-diluted investment to build a dedicated production line for the startup.
It’s not an entirely new idea—solar-powered calculators have been around for decades—but it’s one that’s been ignored more recently as the power demands of modern devices have outstripped the capacity of traditional solar panels.
“It’s power-dense,” Vivian Qu, co-founder and CEO of RadianX, told TechCrunch. “The reason why perovskites were so interesting is the high power density”
Perovskites are not a new idea either, although the class of materials has struggled to gain a foothold. They are still more expensive than typical silicon-based solar panels, and they are not quite as durable, although they have made strides in recent years.
But they make up for those shortfalls in power delivery – the RadianX’s 1.2 meter by 0.6 meter panel, for example, harvests light at 22.33% efficiency, which the company said is the best on record.
For RadianX, durability is also less of a concern. The company was able to beat a key industry standard for durability, and by targeting indoor devices, the company’s panels are subject to less wear and tear. The panels, which can be as thin as 0.7 millimeters, can be suitable.
To extract more power from the panels, RadianX is also developing power electronics tailored to perovskites. Most existing electronics are tuned for silicon wafers, but “silicon has a completely different light-soaking characteristic,” she said.
Unlike many other solar companies, RadianX does not plan to sell bare panels. “RadianX is trying to package all of this and sell this to device manufacturers as something they don’t need to worry about,” Qu said.
Ultimately, Qu and Douglas hope their power packs will land in everything from e-readers to factory sensors—and maybe some places they haven’t even dreamed of yet.
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