(http://www.micropelt.com/aboutus/locations/halle.php)

Micropelt at Weinberg Campus

Micropelt Kicks Off World’s First Micro Peltier Volume Production

Micropelt, Freiburg (Germany) based pioneer in micro thermoelectric generators, Peltier coolers and sensors announces the kick-off of the company’s first volume production site. An investment of up to 8 million Euros will be made by Micropelt until completion of the new fab in early 2010. Substantial funding has been raised from the fund “IBG Fonds I”, managed by Goodvent VC, and from mbg Sachsen-Anhalt, all based in the state capital of Magdeburg. Development subsidies of the state of Saxony Anhalt complete the funding. The fab is located in the Eastern German city of Halle, creating 16 new full time jobs on 720 square meters of floor space. Production starts in spring 2010. During the same year, full qualification and certification are to be completed. Volume ramp-up and multi-shift operation is targeted for 2011, such that the strongly growing demand for thermogenerators (TEG), thermoelectric coolers (TEC), and fast thermal sensors can be covered.

Burkhard Habbe, VP Business Development, sees significant opportunities in various markets: “More and more OEMs and users of wireless sensors leverage energy harvesting power supplies to avoid battery maintenance and extend power budgets.” For laser companies producing high volumes of stabilized laser transmitters for telecom and FTTx Micropelt’s laser TECs offer the “three-Dollar cooling solution these markets can tolerate,” Habbe continues, and goes on: “Explosive growth in genomic testing, analytics and diagnostics creates a huge demand for fast and precise small-scale PCR processes. No one can drive those thermal cycling processes as good as our micro TECs.” Sensing applications use the effect of Micropelt thermogenerators acting as a huge thermopile in terms of signal and as a very small one in terms of speed – both at the same time. Fritz Volkert, Micropelt’s CEO, makes optimistic conclusions despite the gloomy economical trend: “Our products support the strong long term trends of sustainability, efficiency and optimal resource utilization in many ways. We have planned our first fab for 100 wafer starts per week, good for up to 10 million devices per year. And we are prepared to scale up.”

Compressed air generation