ITNEnergy Systems is really good at laying down a schmear - not cream cheese or butter, but the ingredients that make solar panels, satellites and high-tech batteries. It is called "thin-film technology," and the Littleton-based company has applied it across a broad array of products.

"The idea is to make something thinner, lighter and more flexible," said ITN founder and CEO Mohan Misra.

In its 20-year history, privately held ITN has spun out four companies based on thin-film processes, and it is set to build another.

ITN and Bridgeworks Capital, based in suburban Portland, Ore., are planning a $25 million factory in Littleton to apply a new energy-conservation coating to windows.

"We hope to have the financing completed by the summer," said Mark Waller, Bridgework's president. A number of companies, including Denver-based RavenBrick, have developed window coatings that automatically darken when the sun shines - to help cut cooling costs.

ITN's electrochromic technology allows the tint to be controlled so that the windows can let in the sun on a winter day. The tinting could also be linked and calibrated with a building's heating-and-cooling system.

"Electrochromics is one of the next technologies we are looking to spin out," Misra said.

ITN's core skill is getting those thin films thinner and thinner, even when building a five-layer battery.

"Your hair is 50 microns thick," Misra said. "That's too thick for us. We work at 1 or 2 microns, sometimes less."

In the 1990s, Misra headed a materials-science unit for Martin-Marietta Corp. and saw promising technologies that simply didn't reach the necessary scale of the defense or aerospace industries.

So in 1995, with a Defense Department grant to develop lightweight solar panels for satellites, Misra created ITN.

The company has developed a business model that identifies emerging technologies, seeks federal grants for early research and brings in private investment as the project gets closer to commercialization.

In high-tech companies and product development, there is a so-called valley of death to cross from laboratory development to a commercial plant.

Many technologies don't make it, but ITN has been skilled in getting out of the valley, Bridgework's Waller said.

"They leverage resources to get through the riskiest part of development and get a technology to a strategic point where venture capital and public money can get excited," Waller said.

Between federal grants and private funds, ITN has invested $200 million in research and development, and the spinoff companies have raised about $500 million, company officials said.

The ITN spinoffs are:

+ MicroSat Systems, a maker of small satellites, including the U.S. Air Force's Tac-Sat satellite. MicroSat was bought in 2008 by Sierra Nevada Corp. for an undisclosed sum.

+ Infinite Power Solutions, a maker of thin-film micro-batteries, which has been sold to a group of investors and in the past three years raised $30 million in venture capital.

+ Global Solar, a flexible thin-film solar-panel manufacturer developed with UniSource Energy Services, an Arizona utility company. Global was sold to a group of European investors.

+ Ascent Solar, a Thornton-based thin-film panel maker focusing on consumer markets. Ascent raised about $265 million from public stock offerings and strategic partners.

There have been challenges for the companies, particularly the solar-panel makers. Prices for solar cells, under pressure from Chinese imports, plummeted by 29 percent in 2012.

In December, Global took cost-cutting steps that included firing 70 percent of its workforce.

Ascent had a $28 million loss in 2012, according to the company's annual report.

In ITN's labs and workshops, 50 employees and contractors are working on a host of new technologies and products, such as the redox flow battery.

The battery is a good example of how ITN works. The U.S. Department of Energy set up a research-grant program to create large-scale energy storage for electric power grids.

One of the groups seeking a grant for a redox battery was the Center for Applied Energy Research at the University of Kentucky - but it didn't get one.

"We are a finalist, and our proposal was published. ITN read it and got in touch to see if we wanted to collaborate," said Steve Lipka, the Kentucky center's associate director.

ITN, which did get a DOE grant, constantly scans literature for promising research and is always looking for partners on projects, Misra said.

Unlike a standard battery, a redox battery uses liquid electrolytes in tanks for storage.

It can be scaled up by building bigger tanks or creating a series of tanks. It also has the prospect of offering cheap storage that could be linked to wind and solar.

The DOE is looking for storage that costs no more than 2 cents a kilowatt-hour for a charge, Lipka said.

"It is a technology that hasn't been researched much or pushed forward in the U.S.," he said.

The center is working on the two storage fluids - one negative and one positive - and the carbon electrodes that tap the fluids. ITN is working on the structure of the batteries and a membrane (a thin film) that separates the two fluids.

"We are just getting started, but it has been a good relationship," Lipka said. "We're talking about future partnerships down the road."

ITN is also working on projects with researchers at Ohio State University, University of Delaware, University of Maryland, State University of New York at Albany and Colorado School of Mines.

When ITN began, about 80 percent of its funding came from government grants and 20 percent from private sources. Today, that proportion has just about flipped, Misra said.

The company is attracting interest from some large manufacturers and automakers, Misra said.

Other technologies and products that ITN is working on include membranes to purify water, fuel cells and new-generation batteries that could triple the range of electric vehicles.

ITN is also looking to apply thin-film technology to lighting displays that could be used in flexible cellphones or in lights, doing away with bulbs altogether.

But Misra cautions not to expect all those products.

"Not everything is a success," he said. "Some technologies can't be commercialized because of cost. So, we do have a valley of death, too."