Shares of solar thin film vendor DayStar Technologies (NASDAQ: DSTI) closed up almost 16% on news late today that the company had brought in more money in a restructuring of its finances.

DayStar is transferring a $15 million senior convertible note originally issued in May, 2006 to a new investor, and raising $5 million from another group of investors. The new sale is as permitted by Nasdaq's rules and subject to standard closing conditions, the company said.

"This transaction is a breakthrough restructuring of our capitalization plan. We appreciate the patience of our customers, lenders, creditors, stockholders and employees during this process. We believe we have significantly improved our ability to raise the additional capital required to meet the financial needs of the company as we move toward full deployment of our operation and growth plans," said Dr. Stephan DeLuca, DayStar's CEO.

DayStar makes low cost, high efficiency thin film Photovoltaic Foil™ based on copper indium gallium di-selenide (CIGS) using production processes adapted from computer component manufacturing.

As reported by Inside Greentech in November, DayStar had recently fallen on hard financial times (see Stion/NStructures, First Solar and DayStar - oh, my!) and, two weeks after its first quarterly analyst call as a public company, swapped its chief executive (see DayStar changes CEO).

DayStar closed the day at $3.32 on NASDAQ, up 45 cents. A year ago, the company had traded as high as $15.39.