Aluminio, Inc was created to solve the biggest technical issue with solar power and enable production of more efficient, cheaper solar cells that can be scaled to terawatts. Aluminio was co-founded by Dr. Brian Hardin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianehardin/), Dr. David Veysset (https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidveysset/) and Dr. Max L'Etoile (https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxletoile/). Brian was previously a co-founder of PLANT PV, which commercialized silver metallization pastes for silicon solar cells and was acquired in 2019. David was previously a Research Scientist at Stanford, and Max received his PhD in MatSci from MIT last year. We are currently a team of four people with plans to hire 4-5 more over the coming months. We are based in San Carlos, CA.

Our mission is to develop products in the highest margin segment of the battery and solar supply chain that meaningfully improve their cost, efficiency, and sustainability. Our goal is to test with customers early in the process and quickly iterate to demonstrate commercial value. Customer validation is the greatest driver of value creation in a startup. We need to speed up the pace of innovation and convert new ideas into commercial products in 2-3 years instead of 7-10 years to combat climate change.

Solar power project overview: Silver consumption is the top concern of solar cell manufacturers. Silver used on silicon cells accounts for 10% of global demand and represents 10% of the total module cost. The solar industry currently spends >$3 Bn/yr purchasing silver metallization pastes. Solar production is expected to rise 3-10x over the next 10 years and may be unsustainable without significant silver reduction. Furthermore, next generation solar cells use 70%-200% more silver than conventional (PERC) cells preventing higher efficiency modules from entering the market. We have created novel foils that are used in the “Aluminio” process to replace silver lines in next generation cells, which would enable cell makers to mass produce them. Applying this technology to only one layer of the cell with two customers (we are engaged with) would generate >$250M/yr in revenue. In the long-term, we believe we can achieve revenues greater than $2 Bn/yr and reduce silver consumption by 90%.

Why Aluminio? There are few opportunities to get involved early in a clean tech company that is well funded, can quickly make a meaningful impact in renewable energy, has a strong value proposition and well-established customer relationships. Aluminio, Inc. recently received a two-year grant from the Breakthrough Energy Fellowship. This grant will completely cover Aluminio efforts to scale and validate the technology with customers over the next 24 months. We are hiring researchers who will help accelerate R&D and build fully functional prototypes. We have strong relationships with large solar cell makers, who expect to test our product in the next 18 months. What we are trying to do is audacious and hard, but it is the cheapest and most scalable solution to replace silver. We need help to make this technology successful, but if we make it work with our customers then we will have strong margins in a high-volume business that will meaningfully impact climate change.

What you'll be doing: We are looking for a collaborative, goal-oriented engineer with experience integrating and automating hardware at the R&D and production scale. We are currently developing several research-scale tools and processes for quickly designing, producing, and testing our prototypes. Our core technology is quickly maturing, and we are rapidly outgrowing our manually operated, low-throughput tools. In the short-term, we need to quickly develop and build larger, more automated versions of these tools. We simultaneously need to design and build tools that can metallize full solar cells in a short period of time. This scaled up tool will be taken to Asia for customer testing. You will work on developing tools for automated wafer handling, precise micron-scale positioning of delicate components with machine vision, handling mandrels with hundreds of meters of foil material, and automated laser processing. New automation and integration challenges will inevitably arise as we continue iterating on our core technology and translating it from the lab to the factory.

Skills We Value:

• Awarded a BS/MS in Engineering or Science field

• Desire to hack, build, and troubleshoot physical prototypes for quick feedback loops and testing

• Experience with integrating and programming custom and off-the-shelf hardware, process automation, and machine vision

• Experience rebuilding, repairing, and repurposing used equipment

• Strong programming ability including experience with hardware integration

• Independent thinker and strong communicator

• Authorized to work in the US

Preferred skills:

• At least five years of industrial experience building and automating equipment

• Experience with high throughput tools

• Experience with tools with sub-30um precision movement

• Experience automating foil handling and coating systems (roll-to-roll, web drives, sputter tools etc.)

• Experience designing and operating optical/laser setups

Perks & Benefits

Competitive cash and equity based on experience

Medical Insurance