Leadership Chronicles: Inside NexWafe with Davor Sutija
Leadership Chronicles is a new series from NexWafe that poses questions to executives about their career, professional experiences and the company.
?? Davor Sutija, PhD
?? Joined NexWafe as CEO in September 2020
Q: You have impressive expertise. Please tell us about your professional journey and how you got to where you are today.
A: I joined NexWafe in 2020 as CEO and we successfully secured nearly $80M in private equity funding to assist with the company’s pivot to accelerate technology development with plans for rapid product commercialization. I am, at heart, a serial entrepreneur with the goal of injecting radical go-to-market strategies into companies with potentially game-changing technology, repositioning them for success. I helped companies capture market share in a number of seminal industries, such as enterprise search, photovoltaics, MEMS sensors, printed electronics, and industrial AI.
As an experienced tech executive, I have always focused on commercializing technology through new product introduction and international go-to-market execution. Previously, I was co-founder and CEO of SiNor AS, the sister company of ScanWafer in REC, and CEO of publicly traded Thinfilm. I was also SVP Enterprise Products at FAST, when it was acquired by Microsoft for $1.3B USD.
I am, at heart, a serial entrepreneur with the goal of injecting radical go-to-market strategies into companies with potentially game-changing technology, repositioning them for success.
Q: What do you think is the most important piece of advice for people who want to pursue their career as a business leader?
A: The business leader of the future will have had a series of professional experiences through their career that focus on breadth, and these will often encompass technical or specialist roles. My advice, then, is to encourage those trained technically, whether as scientists, engineers, managers, accountants, or lawyers, to take roles that help them take a step away from their core competence, but where their specific unique strengths can contribute to the organization’s success.
Moving laterally, even to new companies, verticals, or markets to gain experience, is often a better investment, than focus on a particular niche. The true generalist is hardly a ‘jack of all trades’, but rather a knowledgeable sparring partner to those specialists tasked with specific functions.
Q: What led to the inception of NexWafe?
A: Existing conventional wafers and the production thereof have already been commoditized and optimized as far as they can go. NexWafe’s technology was born in Freiburg, Germany at the Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme ISE , part of the world’s leading applied research organization, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft .
NexWafe spun off from Fraunhofer in 2015 to become a cornerstone technology for the global energy transition after spending nearly 20 years developing a revolutionary process for manufacturing silicon wafers.
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Q: Please shed some light on NexWafe and its products and services.
A: NexWafe is pioneering a unique, patented green solar wafer manufacturing solution that simplifies wafer production and reduces energy use and silicon waste. This results in drastically lowered production costs for n-type monocrystalline wafers used for the majority of high-performing solar modules.
The company’s novel manufacturing method delivers wafers that are engineered to the requirements of each customer and already achieving parity with commercially available Czochralski (CZ) wafers. Providing an opportunity to optimize the performance of a chosen cell design enables solar cell makers to ultimately deliver higher efficiencies.
NexWafe is pioneering a unique, patented green solar wafer manufacturing solution that simplifies wafer production and reduces energy use and silicon waste.
Q: How do you differentiate your brand from the competition?
A: NexWafe’s direct gas-to-wafer technology to produce EpiNex wafers has several advantages compared to conventional PV wafer production, including??lower costs, less energy consumption, and a lower carbon dioxide footprint. NexWafe’s direct gas-to-wafer technology eliminates energy-intensive steps from the wafer production process as it uses 70% less energy, avoids polysilicon production and eliminates ingot pulling and wafering, reducing silicon waste by more than 90%.
Q: What is the change you are bringing with your brand today? Tell us about the clientele that can benefit from your offerings.
A: NexWafe is creating value in a growing market. We developed an innovative production process using direct gas-to-wafer technology for producing monocrystalline silicon PV wafers with lower costs, less energy consumption, and a lower carbon dioxide footprint.
NexWafe’s EpiNex wafers are a cost-effective drop-in replacement for conventional wafers, enabling wafer production outside of China. The epitaxy manufacturing process reduces wafer production costs by more than 50% when compared to traditional CZ manufacturing. NexWafe’s EpiNex wafers are engineerable to the requirements of each customer, giving solar cell makers an unprecedented opportunity to optimize the performance of their own chosen cell design. This benefit refers to the possibility of achieving ultra-thin wafers and doping gradients that in combination can increase cell efficiencies in mass production.
Q: What were the major challenges during the initial days of NexWafe? How did you overcome them?
A: One major challenge during the initial days of NexWafe was the fact that PV manufacturing had moved from Europe to China. There was the general perception that in PV manufacturing Europe cannot compete with China. However, this statement is only true if you try to use the same technology as the large Chinese PV manufacturers. NexWafe′s game changing technology will enable European PV manufacturing to successfully compete in the global PV market because of its energy and material savings and its ability to enable world record solar cell efficiencies in mass production.
Q: What are your plans for 2023 and beyond?
A: EpiNex provides a path to high-efficiency solar cells using true monolithic design and engineered wafer properties for all cell designs including tandem. Currently, NexWafe is prototyping mass production on our manufacturing line in Freiburg. We intend to start commercial production in Bitterfeld in 2025. After meeting commercial and technical targets, we plan to license our technology to strategic manufacturing partners to spread EpiNex technology quickly.
Contact us at [email protected] .