Sachs polycrystalline silicon ribbon solar cell venture

Emanuel Sachs (MIT, co-coiner of "3D printing") founded a company that pulled silicon ribbon directly from the melt using carbon-fiber wires for solar-cell manufacture. Was projected to take over the solar-cell market 25 years ago; company subsequently bankrupt.

So I wanted to make a rongeur out of sapphire. I was confident you could buy it — there's a company that started here in Cambridge and they could grow single crystal sapphire tubes or rods or sheets. They take this 2000 degree melt and they slowly pull the stuff out of the melt, and grow things of different size. I actually have some silicon like that in my office that Professor Sachs — who was one of the inventors of the name 3D printing — he started a company that has since gone bankrupt. They used carbon fiber wires, and they would lift a sheet of more polycrystalline silicon for solar cells. They're about three or four inches wide and you grow the silicon right out of the melt as a thin sheet. You didn't have to cut it with diamond or anything else. It was going to take over the solar cell market 25 years ago.