SunHydrogen entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with COTEC to explore the development and optimization of industrial electroplating solutions for SunHydrogen’s semiconductor deposition, a fundamental component of the company’s nanoparticle technology.

Located in Changwon, South Korea, COTEC is a leader in industrial electroplating and electrochemical processes and is well-positioned to collaborate with SunHydrogen in this critical aspect of the company’s scale-up process. COTEC possesses extensive plating expertise across the aerospace, automotive, defense and nuclear industries, and has worked with high-level clients such as Boeing, Hanwha, Airbus and more.

Within one of SunHydrogen’s hydrogen generators, billions of patented photoelectrosynthetically active heterostructure (PAH) nanoparticles per square centimeter split apart water to generate H₂ and oxygen. These PAH nanoparticles are composed of multiple layers of solar cells. The high-voltage, high-light absorbing properties of the solar cells enable the Company to make them ultrathin and with significantly fewer materials, lowering costs and raising efficiency. Together, SunHydrogen and COTEC will explore the development and implementation of electroplating solutions to translate the existing PAH architecture and process to manufacturing scale while maintaining low cost and high efficiency.

“As SunHydrogen has built relationships with a growing group of industrial partners over the past several years, we’ve learned that our scale-up process is most effective when we take a diversified approach that allows for specialized expertise to be directed to the many individual components of our technology,” said SunHydrogen’s CEO Tim Young.

“This is evidenced by our recent announcement of the approval of $3.1 MM in funding for Project NanoPEC, a 3-year initiative that will bring us together with six partners in Germany to accelerate our scale-up process,” Mr. Young continued. “At lab scale, our team has consistently reached favorable photovoltage and photocurrent densities, but our current challenge is translating this success to larger scales. It is this challenge that we believe companies like COTEC – and our partners in Germany – can help us overcome.”

Mr. Young, as well as SunHydrogen’s Director of Technology Dr. Joun Lee, both made visits to COTEC’s Changwon facility in 2023, and this week members of COTEC’s team visited SunHydrogen’s Iowa headquarters to sign the MoU and visit SunHydrogen’s laboratory. Earlier in the year, COTEC demonstrated to SunHydrogen their ability to electrodeposit materials at nanoscale.