QD Solar

QD Solar makes tandem solar cells that stack perovskites over quantum dots, delivered as flexible sheets that drop into a standard panel and are manufactured roll to roll. Silicon stops absorbing at around 1100 nanometers, which means up to 30% of the sun's energy, everything out in the infrared, passes through a conventional panel and is never collected.

That waste is silicon's physics, not its engineering, and it sets a hard ceiling no amount of manufacturing skill can lift. Perovskites take the visible light and quantum dots take the infrared, and stacking them reaches efficiencies silicon cannot approach. The value of getting past that ceiling is that a panel produces more from the same roof, the same racking, the same install labor, all of which now cost more than the cell does. Efficiency is the one lever that makes everything downstream of it cheaper.