Harvard Business School students have made a case study of Natcore Technology’s joint venture with Zhuzhou City in China, one of the country’s solar technology zones.

China is divided geographically into zones where certain technologies are predominant, said Natcore senior vice president Tom Scarpa.

Natcore, a U.S. solar technology company that opened a laboratory on the Kodak Eastman campus in Rochester, N.Y., earlier this year, contracted with Zhuzhou City to manufacture some of its equipment when it’s ready to go to market.

Natcore has developed a patented liquid phase deposition technology for building more efficient solar cells more affordably and applying antireflective coatings.

“We developed the equipment here,” Scarpa said. “And the smart part, the part that measures time, will probably be manufactured here. But the other 80 percent, the rest will be made in China.”

He said Dr. Regina Abrami, senior fellow at Harvard in Asian Business and Globalization, approached Natcore and asked if her students could use the company as a case study.

“They wanted to know how we got involved with China and how the agreement works,” Scarpa said.

The case study reaches beyond Natcore’s joint venture agreement with Zhuchou City to how the company financed its work through investments from venture capitalists to China’s energy statistics and major differences in industrial policies between the U.S. and China.

Abrami presented the case study to students Feb. 9.

Natcore CEO Chuck Provini has been invited to the elite university to speak and answer questions about how Natcore is structured and about the joint venture in China, Scarpa said.