GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT) never fails to surprise by pulling out  billion dollar inventions in a regular manner. The company has been a hotbed of innovation making surprising inroads into the LED and solar industries. Its sapphire technology has made a huge splash gaining a foothold into the technology industry with Apple (AAPL) providing a massive boost to the company.

GT Advanced shares have advanced by more than 500% in the last couple of years; and we had all along asked investors to keep putting money into this company because of the excellent management and pedigree of inventing and monetizing new products with great regularity. GTAT is not only gaining from its famous sapphire technology now, but also getting wins in the Polysilicon equipment market as the solar market sees a revival.

GTAT has now announced a new solar cell technology, which can sharply reduce the costs by lowering the amount of silver metallization paste. The company has already won 4 customers in Asia. This technology should see a lot of traction, as it can be embedded into existing solar cell and module equipment without requiring large scale changes. It uses the “screen printing” technology used to make crystalline solar cells currently. The innovation in Merlin comes from reducing the amount of metallization paste, which is used to make interconnects in cells. Note solar panels require innovation to reduce costs as most of the process and scale advantages have already been exploited. Ink technology, metallization etc. will now lead to reduced costs which will further make solar electricity costs competitive with fossil fuel energy costs. GT Advanced is a great stock to own; though we would wait for lower prices since the stock has jumped up by 100% in the last couple of months, as positive news flow has made the stock jump higher and higher.