Founders

Bulent Basol, Ph.D.

Dr. Basol has over 30 years of experience in the field of PV. He received his B.S. from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey and Ph.D. from UCLA in solid-state electronics. After graduation, he led the R&D activities at Monosolar Inc., where he developed a high efficiency PV technology based on electroplated CdTe. In 1984, electroplated CdTe technology was transferred to SOHIO/BP and eventually yielded the highest efficiency CdTe PV modules at that time. After Monosolar, Dr. Basol co-founded International Solar Electric Technology (ISET) with two other partners and was in charge of the technology development in the company. During this period he acted as the Principal Investigator of a large number of development programs funded by DOE, NASA, DOD, DOC, and aerospace corporations, and innovated vacuum and non-vacuum based techniques for CIGS and CdTe-based thin film solar cell fabrication. Among these were novel nano-ink based approaches that yielded the highest efficiency CIGS devices (over 12%) made by ink methods at the time. Dr. Basol also developed the first efficient flexible CIS solar cell structure on polymeric substrates for which he received an innovation award from NASA. In 2000 he joined NuTool Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up company, as a Board Member and Chief Technical Officer, where he led the efforts to develop novel copper electroplating, electrochemical mechanical deposition, electropolishing, and electrochemical mechanical polishing processes and tools for IC interconnect applications. In 2004 ASM International acquired NuTool, and Dr. Basol became the CTO of the new company, ASM NuTool. Dr. Basol has 78 issued and over 65 pending patents in the fields of PV, materials processing, and electrochemical processes and tools for semiconductor manufacturing. The core technology of SoloPower is based on one of Dr. Basol's innovations employing high-throughput, low-cost electroplating techniques for high efficiency CIGS device fabrication. Dr. Basol has over 100 publications.

Homayoun Talieh

Prior to SoloPower, Mr. Talieh was a founder, president and CEO of NuTool, a semiconductor electroplating and polishing equipment company. NuTool was acquired by ASM International in June 2004 and Mr. Talieh served as General Manager of the new company, ASM NuTool, which was ASM's Copper Interconnect Systems business unit. Mr. Talieh's other business affiliations include: General Manager of Applied Materials' Track division, where he designed new products, and Vice President and General Manager of the CMP division at OnTrak Systems, developing innovative semiconductor equipment that enabled the company to tap a new multi-billion dollar market. Before leaving, Mr. Talieh helped OnTrak go public. The company was later acquired by Lam Research Corporation. Mr. Talieh began his career in the 1980s at Monosolar Inc., which pioneered a revolutionary new electroplating technique for the deposition of CdTe solar cells on glass. This emerging company was acquired by British Petroleum (BP), which used the acquisition to create BP Solar, enabling it to enter the solar energy market. Mr. Talieh's founding of SoloPower brings him full circle, to focus once again on products that apply groundbreaking photovoltaic technology in new ways. Mr. Talieh earned his degree in electrical engineering from Northeastern University, and received a master's degree in materials science from the University of Illinois. He holds more than 63 patents in the areas of Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD), Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP), and photolithography. In addition, Mr. Talieh has authored numerous papers that have been published in leading technical journals.