We are a family-run, technology-based microenterprise from Jaén (Spain). We have experience in advanced materials, technical plastics processing and optics applied to solar energy, automotive lighting and other sectors. We started in 2006 as a product and tooling design engineering firm. We then created REFLEXIS, an injection-moulded plastic solar mirror incubated by Fundación Repsol, and in the European project IN-POWER we led its evolution into a polymeric mirror that was installed in a solar thermal pilot plant in Seville. Here we tell our story and show our technology.
If you are interested in our developments, write to us. We are looking for an industrial partner or an investor to take them to market.
Unlike a photovoltaic panel, a solar thermal power plant uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight and produce heat, and with that heat, electricity. How much energy enters the plant depends on the mirrors.
Three main families of plants are built today. There are parabolic trough collectors, linear Fresnel collectors, with rows of almost flat mirrors close to the ground, and tower plants. In all of them, the solar field covers hectares of mirrors that have to be made, installed, aimed and cleaned often. There is a fourth, the parabolic dish with a Stirling engine, which has not caught on commercially.
Thousands of mirrors track the sun and reflect its radiation onto a receiver. That receiver is a tube in parabolic trough and Fresnel collectors, and in tower plants it sits at the very top. A fluid runs through it and heats up to several hundred degrees. That heat produces steam and drives a turbine, as in a conventional power plant. Because the heat can be stored in molten salt tanks, the plant keeps generating after sunset.
The usual mirror is glass several millimetres thick, silvered on the back. It reflects well, but it is heavy, it has to be curved and mounted on a separate structure, and wind, hail or handling can break it. Spain is one of the countries with the most installed solar thermal capacity in the world, and much of it is in Andalusia, so from Jaén we had the sector close at hand.
Tracking on one axis · fixed linear receiver · molten salt at ≈550 °C in recent plants
By day, the receiver heats the molten salt and fills the hot tank.
Tracking on one axis · linear receiver that turns with the trough · oil at ≈390 °C
By day, the hot oil makes steam and charges the salt through the heat exchanger.
Tracking on two axes · point receiver at the top of the tower · molten salt at ≈565 °C
By day, the salt heats up in the receiver and fills the hot tank.
Tracking on two axes · point receiver at the focus · Stirling engine, no storage
By day, the dish tracks the sun and the engine drives the generator.
The idea came from our experience with car headlamps, whose exact shape is injection-moulded in plastic, vacuum-metallised and protected in the same industrial sequence. We filed the patent in 2009 and developed it until 2021, from the sample to the pilot plant.
REFLEXIS is a first-surface silver mirror on injection-moulded polycarbonate. The part comes out of the mould with its optical curvature, its stiffening ribs and its fixing points. It is then silvered on the front face, so the light is reflected without passing through any glass, and protected with a transparent overmoulded coating that also covers the edge.
We chose that coating because it is made of a self-healing material. Under operating conditions, the micro-scratches left by sand and cleaning brushes close by themselves with the help of heat, and the surface does not turn matte, so the mirror does not lose efficiency. Together with a substrate that does not break, the mirror is designed to last in the solar field.
It is a light, glass-free reflector that allows geometries curved glass cannot achieve, and it is made with automotive mass-production processes.
In July 2013, Fundación Repsol chose REFLEXIS from 479 applications from around the world for the second call of its Entrepreneurs Fund. We were the only Andalusian company selected.
The incubation took place in two places. At the Repsol Technology Centre, in Móstoles, we used its facilities and received training and mentoring from its experts. In Martos, in December 2013, we moved into an office in the building of Andaltec, the Plastics Technology Centre. The Fund also provided financial support. In those two years we went from the idea to the first injection-moulded prototypes, passed the accelerated CASS corrosion test at the Plataforma Solar de Almería and reached sample “Z”, a 10 × 10 cm sample with the best version of the mirror.
The Fund brought investment forums, meetings with companies and institutional visits, including one by the Minister of Economy, Luis de Guindos, to our office in November 2014. With that groundwork we joined the European project IN-POWER.
In April 2018, Fundación Repsol invited us to give a talk at the Repsol Technology Centre, in Móstoles, as part of a selection of the Fund’s success stories. We told the story of our ten years of R&D, from the patent to the European consortium.
Click each row or tab to see its animated diagram.
Not to scale. The glass mirror is a second-surface mirror. Light crosses the glass on the way in and out to the silver at the back, and bends slightly as it enters and leaves, so the reflected ray comes out offset from the ideal one (dashed line). REFLEXIS is a first-surface mirror that reflects off the silver on the front face, under a transparent coating, without passing through any glass.
Not to scale. Hailstones have sharp edges and strike like stones. Glass is fragile against hail, wind and handling. The REFLEXIS polycarbonate absorbs the impact, and in the 2014 and 2015 tests by ISFOC and Andaltec it withstood 25 mm hail without damage.
Enlarged detail, not to scale. Wind-blown sand and cleaning brushes scratch the surface. On glass the scratches stay, the surface goes matt and scatters light. On REFLEXIS the self-healing coating closes the micro-scratches and the surface does not go matt.
Not to scale. A glass mirror is bent and mounted with brackets on a separate structure. REFLEXIS comes out of the mould in one piece, with its curvature, stiffening ribs and fixing points built into its own envelope, with nothing sticking out. The supports do not come out of the mould, but they are simpler and there is less to assemble.
Not to scale. Glass is bent from a flat sheet, and its shape depends on that bending. REFLEXIS admits geometries that bent glass does not, because it takes whatever shape the mould has, whether double-curved, faceted or ribbed, in a single piece.
Not to scale. For the same area, REFLEXIS weighs less than a 4 mm glass mirror, and its stiffness is built into the part through moulded ribs. Glass relies on a structure to give it that stiffness.
Not to scale. First manufacture goes through substrate injection (1), metallising (2) and protection by overmoulding (3), series processes from the automotive sector. At the end of its life the substrate is not thrown away. The outer layer is stripped (S), the part is metallised and protected again, and the mirror goes back to work without another injection (dashed arrow). A damaged glass mirror is replaced as a whole.
Specular reflectance (the light the mirror reflects in the right direction, within a very small angle) of sample “Z”, the best of the 80 recipes and versions we tested. It beats the reference glass mirror, which gave 95.3 %, by half a point.
ρs · 660 nm · 12.5 mrad · Plataforma Solar de Almería (CIEMAT) · Dec 2015
In copper-accelerated acetic acid salt spray (CASS) with no measurable loss of reflectance and no visible edge corrosion, with the edge sealing of the third prototype phase.
ISO 9227 · Plataforma Solar de Almería · Nov 2015
In neutral salt spray without pitting, with the perimeter sealing channel of the IN-POWER mirror.
NSS · ISO 9227 · IN-POWER · 2019-2020
Hail with no damage to the mirror. The polycarbonate absorbs an impact that would break a glass mirror.
Hail impact · ISFOC and Andaltec · 2014 and 2015
Change in reflectance after abrasive washing equivalent to a year of cleaning.
Abrasive washing · IN-POWER · 2019-2020
Six months outdoors in Terrassa (Spain) and three in Ovalle (Chile), on the southern edge of the Atacama Desert, in very harsh conditions. The coated samples kept their reflectance.
Outdoor exposure · LEITAT · 2020-2021
We protected the invention with Spanish patent ES2360777, “Reflector solar y procedimiento de fabricación”, filed in 2009 and granted in 2012, and with its international PCT extension (WO2010086468). It has been cited by later applications, including one by CIEMAT.
Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme
After the incubation in the Entrepreneurs Fund, between 2017 and 2021 we were part of IN-POWER, a consortium of eleven partners from Spain, Germany, Italy and France coordinated by the technology centre LEITAT. The project aimed to make solar thermal electricity cheaper with advanced materials, and our task was to design the new mirror and take it to industrial scale.
Its full name was Advanced Materials technologies to QUADRUPLE the Concentrated Solar Thermal current POWER GENERATION. It had a budget of €5.82 M, of which the European Union contributed €4.99 M, and it set out to renew almost every component of a solar thermal power plant:
We shared the consortium with technology centres and research institutes such as LEITAT, Tekniker, France’s CEA and Italy’s ENEA, and with companies such as Fertiberia and MAGTEL. As a microenterprise from Jaén, we received €394,119 of European funding, led two of the technical work packages and managed the intellectual property of the whole consortium.
Kick-off in BrusselsConsortium kick-off meeting. We presented REFLEXIS at the Junta de Andalucía delegation, with Fundación Repsol.
The consortium in JaénWe hosted the six-month meeting.
Injection in AustriaInjection trials of the mirror at Engel and a consortium meeting in Terrassa.
SolarPACES 2018Project poster at the world solar thermal conference, in Casablanca.
Industrial scale-upInjection-compression mould for the 0.50 × 0.25 m mirror and series production.
Pilot plantIn the middle of the pandemic we shipped 840 mirrors to Seville, where they were mounted on the Fresnel collector.
Close and Innovation RadarIN-POWER ended on 30 June, and the European Commission registered the polymeric mirror as our innovation in its Innovation Radar.
The EU Innovation Radar is the register in which the European Commission records the most promising innovations from the projects it funds. They are identified by the experts who review each project, who also indicate which organisations are key to developing them, the “Key Innovators”, and how mature they are for the market.
From IN-POWER, the Innovation Radar registered two innovations of our polymeric mirror, one focused on solar thermal power and the other extending it to other applications. In both, Nematia is listed as the sole “Key Innovator”: the Commission registers the innovation as ours. Its maturity level, “Tech Ready”, is the one for technologies that are already advanced, at the prototype, pilot or demonstration stage, before commercialisation.
In the project’s final review, the Commission’s experts also pointed out that the polymeric mirror was possibly the IN-POWER result with the greatest exploitation potential.
In Power Project
LEITAT · MAGTEL · 2021
Project summary published by LEITAT in August 2021 and produced by MAGTEL. It covers the construction of the Seville pilot plant, the preparation of the Fresnel loops and the polymeric mirrors once installed.
LEITAT · 18 Aug 2021 · on-screen text in English
The IN-POWER project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 720749.
The way of making mirrors that we brought to solar thermal power also opened the door to astronomy. A lightweight mirror that comes out of the process with its shape built in is of interest to ground-based telescopes and space missions.
It all began on 28 January 2016, when we presented REFLEXIS at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) of the European Space Agency, in Villanueva de la Cañada (Madrid). The session was organised by Francisco Espartero, director of the Observatorio Andaluz de Astronomía, and ESA featured it on the website of its CESAR education programme with the summary “Reflexis plastic reflectors, a possible revolution for astronomy”.
That meeting led to our collaboration with a group at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) specialising in robotic telescopes. With its researchers we proposed a 60 cm mirror for a wide-field robotic telescope dedicated to monitoring space debris and near-Earth asteroids, characterised our samples at the CSIC Institute of Optics in Madrid, and studied their application to the Cherenkov telescopes of the CTA observatory (now CTAO).
In 2017 we brought this activity together in a line of its own, Nematia Space & Optics. In 2018, with the IAA-CSIC, we prepared a proposal for a lighter mirror for the infrared telescope of THESEUS, a candidate mission of ESA’s science programme, and in 2019 we registered in ESA-STAR, the Agency’s supplier system.
We never proposed sending the polycarbonate solar thermal mirror into space. What carries over from one application to another is the way the mirror is made, as a part that comes out of manufacturing with its optical shape, stiffness and mountings and is then metallised and protected. Materials, process and coatings depend on where the mirror works, and in a telescope or a satellite they are different.
Solar thermal · by day · outdoors
Sun, wind, hail, sand and frequent washing for decades. It must reflect the whole solar spectrum well and be cheap per square metre.
Optical and Cherenkov · at night
Optical telescopes work under a dome and need a very precise shape that stays stable as the temperature changes. Cherenkov telescopes carry hundreds of facets each, in the open air with no dome to protect them, and must reflect above all blue and ultraviolet light. In both cases, the lighter the mirror, the simpler the mount.
Satellites and telescopes in orbit · in vacuum
Launch vibrations, vacuum, radiation and extreme thermal cycles. Materials must not release gases that fog the optics, the shape must hold to fractions of a micron, and every kilo counts.
That is why each use has its own combination of materials, process and coating. If you are interested in the technical detail, write to us.
ESAC (ESA)We present REFLEXIS at the European Space Astronomy Centre.
60 cm mirrorWe offer the IAA-CSIC a 60 cm mirror for a wide-field robotic telescope.
Cherenkov telescopesWe submit a mirror proposal for the CTA observatory to the IAA-CSIC.
CSICWe characterise our samples at the CSIC Institute of Optics in Madrid.
Nematia Space & OpticsWe bring the space and astronomy activity together in a line of its own.
THESEUSMirror proposal with the IAA-CSIC for an ESA candidate mission.
ESA-STARWe register as suppliers to the European Space Agency.
Before REFLEXIS, and while we were developing it, we worked as a product and tooling engineering firm for thermoplastics. We supported the customer from the idea to the approval of the part.
Our technical team came from the engineering and purchasing departments of leading automotive and automotive lighting manufacturers. We worked with the most advanced design and simulation tools in the sector, and also did re-engineering of existing parts.
Sectors: automotive and automotive lighting, aeronautics, rail and marine, telephony, household appliances and furniture.
Automotive lighting. Juan Manuel Donaire, our R&D director, is the author of automotive lighting patents for high-volume models. Once at Nematia, we developed a lamp holder with an integrated flexible circuit, with a patent application in 2009 (ES2356454).
European projects. Besides IN-POWER, we took part in preparing new European R&D proposals in solar energy and in optics for space.
Training · 2015 and 2016
With Andaltec, the Plastics Technology Centre, we organised and taught this course on part and mould design with CATIA V5. The first edition, in 2015, lasted 100 hours, and the second, in 2016, 200.
COVID-19 · Apr 2020
In the first weeks of the pandemic we designed a face shield and its injection mould, able to produce between 4,000 and 5,000 units a day, and gave the design away free so that the shields could be made and donated.
Juan Manuel Donaire Camacho founded Nematia in Martos (Jaén) with his children, Alejandro and Zayda, after more than 30 years in automotive lighting.
We set up Nematia Ingeniería Integral in Martos (Jaén), an engineering firm for the design and development of thermoplastic products for the automotive and aeronautics industries.
In Seville, we take part in the European Seventh Framework Programme day for the aeronautics sector.
We register our trademark and launch our first corporate website.
After discovering Andasol, near Guadix, Juan Manuel Donaire comes up with the idea of applying car headlamp technology to the solar mirror. This is how REFLEXIS is born.
We file the patents for the injection-moulded solar reflector and for a lamp holder with an integrated flexible circuit.
We extend the reflector patent internationally (PCT).
We sign an engineering framework contract with a manufacturer in the rail sector.
The international application for the solar reflector patent is published (WO2010086468).
We are granted Spanish patent ES2360777, “Reflector solar y procedimiento de fabricación”.
Fundación Repsol chooses REFLEXIS from 479 applications for its Entrepreneurs Fund. We are the only Andalusian company selected.
The President of Jaén Provincial Council receives us and holds the project up as an example for young people.
We obtain the REFLEXIS trademark and the first prize “Realidad Empresarial” at the VI Premios al Emprendimiento of the University of Jaén.
We move into an office in the building of Andaltec, the Plastics Technology Centre, in Martos.
We receive training and mentoring at the Repsol Technology Centre, and Repsol’s Board of Directors learns about the project.
MIT Technology Review’s Spanish edition publishes the project.
We take part in South Summit, in Madrid.
The Minister of Economy, Luis de Guindos, visits our office at Andaltec and sees REFLEXIS. Canal Sur Televisión covers the visit in its news bulletins.
We receive the Premio Jóvenes Jaén from the Andalusian Youth Institute, in the Economy and Employment category.
The first Andaltec-Nematia course on part and tooling design begins. We present REFLEXIS at the Entrepreneurs Fund Innovation Forum.
The newspaper El Mundo reports how we validate the prototyping process on a small scale, with 150 prototypes.
We receive an institutional visit from the Junta de Andalucía.
We carry out the third prototype phase with industrial partners from Germany, Austria and Italy. The edge sealing passes the CASS corrosion test and we obtain sample “Z”, the best version of the mirror.
REFLEXIS appears in “Juntos lo hemos hecho posible”, the Entrepreneurs Fund’s four-year report. We join the European proposal IN-POWER.
We take part in the Fund’s 3rd Innovation, Industry and Investment Forum, at Campus Repsol.
We present REFLEXIS at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), in Villanueva de la Cañada. Our collaboration with the IAA-CSIC begins.
We teach the second edition of the part and tooling design course, now 200 hours long.
We characterise our samples at the CSIC Institute of Optics in Madrid, together with the IAA-CSIC.
The European Commission approves IN-POWER.
IN-POWER kicks off in Brussels, and we present REFLEXIS at the Junta de Andalucía delegation.
We change our name to Nematia Technologies. We go on a trade mission to Israel.
We host the IN-POWER consortium in Jaén.
We create the Nematia Space & Optics line for ground and space telescope mirrors.
We join Solar Concentra, the Spanish technology platform for concentrating solar power.
We run injection trials of the IN-POWER mirror at Engel (Austria).
Fundación Repsol invites us to tell the story of our ten years of R&D at the Repsol Technology Centre, as one of the Fund’s success stories.
IN-POWER is presented at SolarPACES 2018, in Casablanca. With the IAA-CSIC we prepare a mirror proposal for THESEUS, an ESA candidate mission.
We obtain the Innovative SME Seal from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
We register in ESA-STAR, the European Space Agency’s supplier system.
We scale the mirror up to 0.50 × 0.25 m, with an injection-compression mould, and produce the series for the pilot plant.
We design a protective face shield against COVID-19 and its injection mould, and give the design away.
We ship 840 mirrors to MAGTEL’s pilot plant in Seville.
On 22 October, the installation of the mirrors begins on the pilot plant’s Fresnel collector.
The EU Innovation Radar registers the polymeric mirror with Nematia as sole “Key Innovator” and rates its maturity as “Tech Ready”. IN-POWER ends on 30 June.
2012 · Spanish Patent and Trademark Office
“Solar reflector and manufacturing process”, filed in 2009 and granted in 2012.
2009 · WIPO
International application for the same invention, filed in 2009 and published in 2010 (WO2010086468).
2013 · Fundación Repsol
One of the 8 projects selected from 479 from around the world, with incubation and mentoring between 2013 and 2015.
2013 · University of Jaén
VI Premios al Emprendimiento of the University of Jaén.
2014 · Andalusian Youth Institute
Economy and Employment category.
2016 · Paris
Among the 500 most disruptive companies in the world in the Hello Tomorrow Challenge.
2016 · European Commission
Partners in the IN-POWER project, with €394,119 of European funding.
2017 · Solar Concentra and ESTELA
Members of Solar Concentra, the Spanish technology platform, and of its working groups, and of ESTELA, the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association.
2018 · Ministry of Science
Official recognition of our R&D and innovation activity, valid from 2018 to 2021.
2021 · European Commission
Sole “Key Innovator” for the IN-POWER polymeric mirror, with “Tech Ready” maturity.
Three people, with no laboratory of our own and few resources, taking an idea from the patent to a European pilot plant.
At every stage we relied on a network of partners, suppliers and laboratories in Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy and France, and on Andaltec and Fundación Repsol. With them we turned an idea from the automotive sector into a solar mirror with optics close to those of glass, passed accelerated corrosion tests, built an injection-compression mould for large parts and made hundreds of mirrors for a pilot plant.
We led two work packages of a Horizon 2020 project and its intellectual property management, and at the end of the project the European Commission registered the polymeric mirror as our innovation.
Along the way we documented the process from start to finish, with 80 recipes and versions tested and more than 2,400 laboratory measurements. We make that knowledge available to anyone who wants to take the mirror to market.
A selection of news, videos and public documents about our work. Links marked as archive lead to the copy saved in the Internet Archive.
We offer the process knowledge, data and designs of REFLEXIS and of the mirror we developed in IN-POWER, which go far beyond what was published in the patent, for transfer, licensing or co-development.
Injection and injection-compression moulding of the substrate, metallisation, overmoulding and edge sealing, documented step by step.
80 recipes and versions, more than 2,400 laboratory measurements, spectra and actual development schedules.
Sample moulds and 0.50 × 0.25 m part moulds, fixtures and masks.
Technical assistance from the founders to adopt the technology.
We are looking for an industrial partner or an investor who wants to take the polymeric mirror to market. If that is you, write to us and we will give you more details about the technology and how we can work together.