German solar wafer specialist Nexwafe is among eight European companies that is receiving scale up investments through the latest round of the European Commission’s EIC STEP Scale Up call.
The initiative is designed to address a market gap in deep tech scale up funding in Europe for companies working on digital, clean or resource-efficient technologies. It offers qualified companies between €10 million ($11.6 million) and €30 million in funding to help leverage private co-investment and achieve financing rounds in excess of €50 million.
Nexwafe, headquartered in the city of Freiburg im Breisgau, is working on commercializing an engineered green solar wafer production process it says can make the solar industry more sustainable. It develops and produces monocrystalline silicon wafers grown directly from inexpensive raw materials, through a continuous, direct gas-to-wafer manufacturing process that reportedly obviates the need for costly and energy-intensive intermediate steps such as polysilicon production and ingot pulling on which traditional wafer manufacturing relies.
The process also reportedly minimizes wastage, cutting wafer production costs by up to 30%. It also offers a 70% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions during manufacturing, according to the company.
Last December, it achieved a power conversion efficiency of 24.4% for a heterojunction solar cell built with its ultrathin wafers. It also announced a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell it developed in partnership with the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology that achieved a power conversion efficiency of 28.9%.
At the time, Nexwafe reported its EpiWafers technology could help module producers to achieve dramatically higher degrees of efficiency without having to upgrade production lines. It also said its technology can enable the production of ultra-thin wafers, already demonstrated via a pilot line at its headquarters.
Nexwafe will take a share of the €171 million the European Commission is splitting across the most recently selected companies for EIC STEP scale up funding. The other seven companies are located across France, Germany and the Netherlands and work on applications including space operations, laser-driven fusion and photonic quantum computers.
The eight winners, alongside 21 additional companies that applied for the scheme but were not selected, have also been accredited with the STEP Seal, designed to facilitate access to complementary or alternative funding.
The EIC STEP scale up call was designated a total budget of €300 million for 2025 and will continue with the same budget in 2026. The funding call remains continuously open on the commission’s funding and tenders portal with evaluation sessions taking place every quarter. The next selection round is scheduled for Feb. 11, 2026.
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