WattGlass Makes a Breakthrough

Fayetteville startup WattGlass LLC has been announced as one of five winners of the SunRISE TechBridge Challenge, a breakthrough that could further develop its technology and shorten time to market.

The award is sponsored by research and development organization Fraunhofer TechBridge, a leading research institute for solar technologies, and partners that include Royal DSM, a global leader in coatings, and Greentown Labs, a clean-tech and clean energy incubator in Massachusetts.

The awards for each of the five early-stage companies include incubation and acceleration programs at Greentown Labs, technical validation services from the Fraunhofer research and development network and eligibility for a DSM partnership and/or venture investment.

WattGlass, a Genesis Technology Incubator client at the Arkansas Research and Technology Park in Fayetteville, was founded in 2014 by Corey Thompson.

The company is working to commercialize antireflective glass coatings that also have self-cleaning and anti-fogging properties.

The five winning companies were whittled down from 56 entries, according to a news release. The other four winners are:

• ARL-D (Manhattan, New York) — ARL-D is commercializing a superhydrophobic technology with anti-reflective, anti-soiling and anti-icing properties.
• HEE Solar (Dallas, Texas) — HEE Solar is developing perovskite photovoltaic technology, made stable to achieve long lifetimes.
• QD Solar (Toronto, Canada) — QD Solar is developing next generation photovoltaic cells using colloidal quantum dot cell technology.
• Tessolar (Cambridge, Massachusetts) — Tessolar’s novel module design that targets reduction in module and balance of system costs. 

To read more about WattGlass, click here.

To read more about Thompson, a member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 2016 Fast 15 class, click here.