Category Archives: Energy Storage

December 10, 2010 – Fujitsu Labs says it has developed a hybrid device that harvests energy and generates electricity from either heat or light, resulting in an economical device with potential use in sensor networks and medical technologies.

The technology, unveiled at this week’s IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2010), addresses a key application sweetspot for such technology. Energy harvesting — converting energy from the surrounding environment to electricity, using anything from light, vibration, heat, even radio waves — removes the need for electrical wiring, power cords, and batteries, which could not only enable use of sensors in new applications and regions but also improve their use (and lower their costs) in existing ones.

The problem, though, is that energy harvesting can only put out a fraction of the power that batteries can, so more powerful devices need to be made. And since some types of devices may not work in some ambient environments (e.g. light or vibration), energy harvesting systems put together several types of these devices utilize multiple forms of external energy (e.g. heat and light, or light and vibrations). An ideal device, then, would combine the ability to convert multiple energy types.

Enter Fujitsu Labs, which says its single device can capture energy from either light or heat (the most typical forms of ambient energy), by connecting two types of semiconductor materials (P-type and N-type semiconductors) that can function as a photovoltaic cell or thermoelectric generator (Figure 1). It also can be manufactured from inexpensive organic materials to keep production costs low.

Figure 1: Single device featuring operation in both photovoltaic mode (left) and thermoelectric mode (right). (Source: Fujitsu Labs)

The technology doubles the energy-capture potential by using both ambient heat and light. In medical fields, for instance, sensors could monitor conditions such as body temperature, blood pressure, and heartbeats without batteries or electrical wiring; if neither energy source is sufficient to power the sensor, it can tap and utilize both sources. Another application: environmental sensing in remote areas for weather forecasting, where battery replacement or electric lines are problematic.

Fujitsu says it will continue to improve the hybrid device’s performance toward planned commercialization around 2015.

Figure 2: Prototype hybrid generating device manufactured
on flexible substrate. (Source: Fujitsu Labs)

 

December 10, 2010 – Fujitsu Labs says it has developed a hybrid device that harvests energy and generates electricity from either heat or light, resulting in an economical device with potential use in sensor networks and medical technologies.

The technology, unveiled at this week’s IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2010), addresses a key application sweetspot for such technology. Energy harvesting — converting energy from the surrounding environment to electricity, using anything from light, vibration, heat, even radio waves — removes the need for electrical wiring, power cords, and batteries, which could not only enable use of sensors in new applications and regions but also improve their use (and lower their costs) in existing ones.

The problem, though, is that energy harvesting can only put out a fraction of the power that batteries can, so more powerful devices need to be made. And since some types of devices may not work in some ambient environments (e.g. light or vibration), energy harvesting systems put together several types of these devices utilize multiple forms of external energy (e.g. heat and light, or light and vibrations). An ideal device, then, would combine the ability to convert multiple energy types.

Enter Fujitsu Labs, which says its single device can capture energy from either light or heat (the most typical forms of ambient energy), by connecting two types of semiconductor materials (P-type and N-type semiconductors) that can function as a photovoltaic cell or thermoelectric generator (Figure 1). It also can be manufactured from inexpensive organic materials to keep production costs low.

Figure 1: Single device featuring operation in both photovoltaic mode (left) and thermoelectric mode (right). (Source: Fujitsu Labs)

The technology doubles the energy-capture potential by using both ambient heat and light. In medical fields, for instance, sensors could monitor conditions such as body temperature, blood pressure, and heartbeats without batteries or electrical wiring; if neither energy source is sufficient to power the sensor, it can tap and utilize both sources. Another application: environmental sensing in remote areas for weather forecasting, where battery replacement or electric lines are problematic.

Fujitsu says it will continue to improve the hybrid device’s performance toward planned commercialization around 2015.

Figure 2: Prototype hybrid generating device manufactured
on flexible substrate. (Source: Fujitsu Labs)

 

December 8, 2010 — Reno-based Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. (Altairnano) (NASDAQ: ALTI) (NASDAQ: ALTID), has been selected by Inversiones Energéticas, S.A. de C.V. (INE), one of El Salvador’s largest electric utilities, to provide a turn-key 10 MW lithium-titanate based battery system, dubbed "ALTI-ESS," for frequency control. Energy storage solutions such as this help utilities balance power generation and load over short periods.

Under the proposed agreement, Altairnano will have responsibility for site preparation, system installation, training, final testing and commissioning of the total solution. The system will be located at INE’s Talnique power station site.

"Altairnano’s ALTI-ESS advanced battery system provides an economical solution for managing voltage and frequency fluctuations, because of its ability to rapidly absorb energy from the grid, and just as quickly discharge energy back into the grid," stated Terry Copeland, Altairnano President and Chief Executive Officer.

According to Altairnano, the nano-structured lithium titanate in the cell of the battery produces distinctive performance attributes, including extremely fast charge and discharge rates, the high round-trip efficiencies, long cycle life, safety, and ability to operate under diverse environmental and extreme temperature conditions.
Altairnano’s lithium titanate technology is also unique because it lacks a solid electrolyte interface (SEI), as shown. The SEI is a “film” on the anode that is an internal resistor that limits power output and generates heat build-up in a standard lithium-ion battery. Therefore, the lack of an SEI allows the lithium titanate battery to work efficiently in extreme temperatures and significantly reduces thermal runaway risk. In short, by removing the highly reactive graphite from the system design, and instead using nano-structured lithium titanate materials as the negative electrode material, no significant interaction takes place with the electrolyte.

The battery’s operating temperature range also is wider than that of other technologies: from -40°C to 55°C (-40°F to 131°F). This capability virtually eliminates the need for supplemental heating when the battery is used in low temperature environments and reduces or eliminates cooling requirements for high temperature operation.

Conventional lithium ion batteries can typically be charged about 1,000 times before they are considered no longer useful. In laboratory testing, the Altairnano energy storage and battery systems have achieved over 25,000 charge and discharge cycles at rates up to 40 times greater than common batteries, and still retain up to 80% of initial charge capacity.

Altairnano also claims its energy storage and battery systems deliver power per unit weight and unit volume several times greater than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Cell measurements performed with high power cell designs indicate specific power as high 4000 W/Kg and power density over 7,500 W/litre. By using nano-structured lithium titanate as the negative electrode material, the formation of an SEI, an electrochemical property that impedes the removal of lithium, which is the first step in power production, is eliminated.

December 8, 2010 — Reno-based Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. (Altairnano) (NASDAQ: ALTI) (NASDAQ: ALTID), has been selected by Inversiones Energéticas, S.A. de C.V. (INE), one of El Salvador’s largest electric utilities, to provide a turn-key 10 MW lithium-titanate based battery system, dubbed "ALTI-ESS," for frequency control. Energy storage solutions such as this help utilities balance power generation and load over short periods.

Under the proposed agreement, Altairnano will have responsibility for site preparation, system installation, training, final testing and commissioning of the total solution. The system will be located at INE’s Talnique power station site.

"Altairnano’s ALTI-ESS advanced battery system provides an economical solution for managing voltage and frequency fluctuations, because of its ability to rapidly absorb energy from the grid, and just as quickly discharge energy back into the grid," stated Terry Copeland, Altairnano President and Chief Executive Officer.

According to Altairnano, the nano-structured lithium titanate in the cell of the battery produces distinctive performance attributes, including extremely fast charge and discharge rates, the high round-trip efficiencies, long cycle life, safety, and ability to operate under diverse environmental and extreme temperature conditions.
Altairnano’s lithium titanate technology is also unique because it lacks a solid electrolyte interface (SEI), as shown. The SEI is a “film” on the anode that is an internal resistor that limits power output and generates heat build-up in a standard lithium-ion battery. Therefore, the lack of an SEI allows the lithium titanate battery to work efficiently in extreme temperatures and significantly reduces thermal runaway risk. In short, by removing the highly reactive graphite from the system design, and instead using nano-structured lithium titanate materials as the negative electrode material, no significant interaction takes place with the electrolyte.

The battery’s operating temperature range also is wider than that of other technologies: from -40°C to 55°C (-40°F to 131°F). This capability virtually eliminates the need for supplemental heating when the battery is used in low temperature environments and reduces or eliminates cooling requirements for high temperature operation.

Conventional lithium ion batteries can typically be charged about 1,000 times before they are considered no longer useful. In laboratory testing, the Altairnano energy storage and battery systems have achieved over 25,000 charge and discharge cycles at rates up to 40 times greater than common batteries, and still retain up to 80% of initial charge capacity.

Altairnano also claims its energy storage and battery systems deliver power per unit weight and unit volume several times greater than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Cell measurements performed with high power cell designs indicate specific power as high 4000 W/Kg and power density over 7,500 W/litre. By using nano-structured lithium titanate as the negative electrode material, the formation of an SEI, an electrochemical property that impedes the removal of lithium, which is the first step in power production, is eliminated.

A team of researchers at the University of Maryland is working to harness and exploiting the "self-renewing" and "self-assembling" properties of viruses for a higher purpose: to build a new generation of small, powerful and highly efficient batteries and fuel cells.

The rigid, rod-shaped Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is a well-known and widespread plant virus that devastates tobacco, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetation. But in the lab, engineers have discovered that they can harness the characteristics of TMV to build components for the lithium ion batteries of the future. Genetically modifying the virus to display multiple metal binding sites allows for electroless nickel deposition and self-assembly of these nanostructures onto gold surfaces.

 

They can modify the TMV rods to bind perpendicularly to the metallic surface of a battery electrode and arrange the rods in intricate and orderly patterns on the electrode. Then, they coat the rods with a conductive thin film that acts as a current collector and finally the battery’s active material that participates in the electrochemical reactions.

As a result, the researchers, brought together by Professor Reza Ghodssi, can greatly increase the electrode surface area and its capacity to store energy and enable fast charge/discharge times. TMV becomes inert during the manufacturing process; the resulting batteries do not transmit the virus. The new batteries, however, have up to a 10-fold increase in energy capacity over a standard lithium ion battery.

Caption: SEM image of Ni/TiO2 nanocomposite electrode (top), cross-section TEM image of an individual nanorod showing the core/shell nanostructure (Credit: University of Maryland, College Park).

"The resulting batteries are a leap forward in many ways and will be ideal for use not only in small electronic devices but in novel applications that have been limited so far by the size of the required battery," said Ghodssi, director of the Institute for Systems Research and Herbert Rabin Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Clark School. "The technology that we have developed can be used to produce energy storage devices for integrated microsystems such as wireless sensors networks. These systems have to be really small in size—millimeter or sub-millimeter—so that they can be deployed in large numbers in remote environments for applications like homeland security, agriculture, environmental monitoring and more; to power these devices, equally small batteries are required, without compromising in performance."

TMV’s nanostructure is the ideal size and shape to use as a template for building battery electrodes. Its self-replicating and self-assembling biological properties produce structures that are both intricate and orderly, which increases the power and storage capacity of the batteries that incorporate them. Because TMV can be programmed to bind directly to metal, the resulting components are lighter, stronger and less expensive than conventional parts.

Three distinct steps are involved in producing a TMV-based battery: modifying, propagating and preparing the TMV; processing the TMV to grow nanorods on a metal plate; and incorporating the nanorod-coated plates into finished batteries.

Specfically, the researchers integrated the TMV deposition and coating process into standard MEMS fabrication techniques as well as characterizing nickel–zinc microbatteries based on this technology. Using a microfluidic packaging scheme, devices with and without TMV structures have been characterized. The TMV modified devices demonstrated charge–discharge operation up to 30 cycles reaching a capacity of 4.45 µAh cm−2 and exhibited a six-fold increase in capacity during the initial cycle compared to planar electrode geometries. The effect of the electrode gap has been investigated, and a two-fold increase in capacity is observed for an approximately equivalent decrease in electrode spacing.

James Culver, a member of the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology and a professor in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, and researcher Adam Brown had already developed genetic modifications to the TMV that enable it to be chemically coated with conductive metals. For this project they extract enough of the customized virus from just a few tobacco plants grown in the lab to synthesize hundreds of battery electrodes. The extracted TMV is then ready for the next step.

Scientists produce a forest of vertically aligned virus rods using a process developed by Culver’s former Ph.D. student, Elizabeth Royston. A solution of TMV is applied to a metal electrode plate. The genetic modifications program one end of the rod shaped virus to attach to the plate. Next these viral forests are chemically coated with a conductive metal, mainly nickel. Other than its structure, no trace of the virus is present in the finished product, which cannot transmit a virus to either plants or animals. This process is patent-pending.

Ghodssi, materials science Ph.D. student Konstantinos Gerasopoulos, and former postdoctoral associate Matthew McCarthy (now a faculty member at Drexel University) have used this metal-coating technique to fabricate alkaline batteries with common techniques from the semiconductor industry such as photolithography and thin film deposition.

While the first generation of their devices used the nickel-coated viruses for the electrodes, work published earlier this year investigated the feasibility of structuring electrodes with the active material deposited on top of each nickel-coated nanorod, forming a core/shell nanocomposite where every TMV particle contains a conductive metal core and an active material shell. In collaboration with Chunsheng Wang, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and his Ph.D. student Xilin Chen, the researchers have developed several techniques to form nanocomposites of silicon and titanium dioxide on the metalized TMV template.  This architecture both stabilizes the fragile, active material coating and provides it with a direct connection to the battery electrode.

In the third and final step, Chen and Gerasopoulos assemble these electrodes into the experimental high-capacity lithium-ion batteries. Their capacity can be several times higher than that of bulk materials and in the case of silicon, higher than that of current commercial batteries. 

"Virus-enabled nanorod structures are tailor-made for increasing the amount of energy batteries can store. They confer an order of magnitude increase in surface area, stabilize the assembled materials and increase conductivity, resulting in up to a10-fold increase in the energy capacity over a standard lithium ion battery," Wang said.

A bonus: since the TMV binds metal directly onto the conductive surface as the structures are formed, no other binding or conducting agents are needed as in the traditional ink-casting technologies that are used for electrode fabrication.

"Our method is unique in that it involves direct fabrication of the electrode onto the current collector; this makes the battery’s power higher, and its cycle life longer," said Wang.

The use of the TMV virus in fabricating batteries can be scaled up to meet industrial production needs. "The process is simple, inexpensive, and renewable," Culver adds. "On average, one acre of tobacco can produce approximately 2,100 pounds of leaf tissue, yielding approximately one pound of TMV per pound of infected leaves," he explains.

At the same time, very tiny microbatteries can be produced using this technology. "Our electrode synthesis technique, the high surface area of the TMV and the capability to pattern these materials using processes compatible with microfabrication enable the development of such miniaturized batteries," Gerasopoulos adds.

While the focus of this research team has long been on energy storage, the structural versatility of the TMV template allows its use in a variety of exciting applications. "This combination of bottom-up biological self-assembly and top-down manufacturing is not limited to battery development only," Ghodssi said. "One of our lab’s ongoing projects is aiming at the development of explosive detection sensors using versions of the TMV that bind TNT selectively, increasing the sensitivity of the sensor. In parallel, we are collaborating with our colleagues at Drexel and MIT to construct surfaces that resemble the structure of plant leaves. These biomimetic structures can be used for basic scientific studies as well as the development of novel water-repellent surfaces and micro/nano scale heat pipes."

Funding for the research comes from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences, the Maryland Technology Development Corporation, and the Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the University of Maryland. James Culver’s work is conducted in collaboration with Purdue University professor Michael Harris.

Energy storage research – specifically high performance cathodes made of low-cost nanocarbons — will be part of the focus on a new collaborative effort between The Dow Chemical Company and University of Queenland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering Nanotechnology (AIBN). Dow will contribute approximately $AU1.74million ($UDS1.7million) in the three-year alliance. In addition to improved energy storage systems, AIBN will conduct research on sustainable sources for chemicals and new-generation circuitry.

The research into high performance cathode materials based on low-cost nanocarbons will involve the research group led by Professor Max Lu and Dr. Denisa Jurcakova. The objective of the project is to develop improved cathode materials with high energy and power densities for applications in hybrid vehicles and renewable energy storage systems.

Caption: PhD student Sean Muir, AIBN’s Dr Denisa Jurcakova, Dow chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris and Professor Max Lu.

Research in the project will involve novel material design, synthesis, electrochemistry and fundamental chemistry. The improved nanoparticles developed will find use in batteries with potential use not only in portable devices, but for hybrid vehicles and energy storage for renewable resources such as sun and wind.

Research into new-generation circuitry for electronics will be completed by Professor Andrew Whittaker’s and Dr. Idriss Blakey’s research group. Researchers will use organic synthesis, physical chemistry and electrical engineering to craft functional plastics and polymers for the manufacture of integrated circuits. The new generation of circuits will increase performance, decrease size and cost and have potential uses in computers, cameras, smart phones, hand-held gadgets and even fridges.

Escalating oil costs and concerns about carbon dioxide emissions make it imperative to develop new manufacturing processes based on renewable substrates rather than diminishing fossil fuels. Research carried out in the third project will be led by Professor Lars Nielsen and Dr. Jens Kromer, and will use scientific advances in the biosciences to genetically reprogram bacteria to produce the chemical building blocks of the future.

 

EnerG2 is a recent start-up focused on customizing electrode materials to enhance energy and power density in ultracapacitors, used for energy storage. The company is using nano-structured materials to optimize the electrodes’ surface area, which they say will help performance and cycle life. In August, EnerG2 broke ground on what they claim to be the world’s first facility dedicated to the commercial-scale production of synthetic high-performance carbon electrode material. The plant was made possible by a $21.3 million Federal stimulus grant allocated by the U.S. Department of Energy for makers of advanced automotive batteries and energy storage technologies. EnerG2 will partner with Albany-based Oregon Freeze Dry, Inc. (OFD).

In addition to the federal stimulus funding, EnerG2 since inception seven years ago has raised over $14.5 million in equity financing. Institutional investors OVP and Firelake led a Series A financing and additional strategic investors added new equity funding in April of this year.

 

Caption: EnerG2’s carbons demonstrate a spectrum of pore size distributions and surface morphologies. The technology is based on molecular self-assembly and produces nano-structured carbon materials that are finely controlled and offer ultra-high surface areas.

The company uses nano-structured carbon materials that are finely controlled and offer ultra-high surface areas. These materials are extremely conductive and are tremendously attractive to energy-storing molecules such as electrolytic ions, methane, natural gas and hydrogen.

It is this kind of technology development that a DoE panel called for in 2007. In their findings, published in the Basic Research Needs for Electrical Energy Storage, the panel said the capability to synthesize nanostructured electrodes with tailored, high-surface-area architectures offers the potential for storing multiple charges at a single site, increasing charge density. The addition of surface functionalities could also contribute to high and reproducible charge storage capabilities, as well as rapid charge-discharge functions. They predicted that the design of new materials with tailored architectures optimized for effective capacitive charge storage will be catalyzed by new computational and analytical tools that can provide the needed foundation for the rational design of these multifunctional materials. "These tools will also provide the molecular-level insights required to establish the physical and chemical criteria for attaining higher voltages, higher ionic conductivity, and wide electrochemical and thermal stability in electrolytes," they said.

Ultracapacitors are a type of electrochemical capacitors (ECs), which differ from conventional dielectric and electrolytic capacitors in that they store far more energy. As energy storage devices, ECs have a number of potentially high-impact characteristics, such as fast charging (within seconds), reliability, large number of charge-discharge cycles (hundreds of thousands), and wide operating temperatures. Because of their very fast charging rate, ECs may be able to recover the energy from many repetitive processes (e.g., braking in cars or descending elevators) that is currently being wasted. Large-scale ECs can perform functions of a different kind, such as power quality regulation of the electrical grid, which can avoid the costly shutdown of industrial operations as a result of intermittent outages and power fluctuations.

While ECs are related to batteries, they use a different energy storage mechanism. Batteries move charged chemical species (ions) from one electrode via an electrolyte to the second electrode, where they interact chemically. Thus batteries store chemical energy. EDLCs store electrical charge physically, without
chemical reactions taking place. Because the charge is stored physically, with no chemical or phase changes taking place, the process is highly reversible and the discharge-charge cycle can be repeated virtually without limit. Typically, an EDLC stores electrical charge in an electrical double layer in an electrode-electrolyte interface of high surface area. Because of the high surface area and the extremely low thickness of the double layer, these devices can have extraordinarily high specific and volumetric capacitances. A striking dissimilarity between batteries and ECs is the number of charge-discharge cycles each can undergo before failure. The dimensional and phase changes occurring in battery electrodes represent one of the key limitations in attaining longer charge-discharge cycling. In contrast, no inherent physical or chemical changes occur in EC electrodes during cycling because the charge is stored electrostatically. As a result, ECs exhibit cycle lifetimes ranging from a few hundred thousand to over one million cycles. Most notably, however, ECs have the ability to deliver an order of magnitude more power than batteries.

Originally working in collaboration with the University of Washington Department of Materials Science & Engineering, EnerG2 has developed and commercialized unique sol-gel processing technologies to construct its carbon materials (from the EnerG2 website). Sol-gel processing, which creates optimal structure and purity in the finished carbon product, is a chemical synthesis that gels colloidal suspensions to form solids through heat and catalysts.

EnerG2 has invented a patented ability to control the hydrolysis and condensation reactions within the gelling process, allowing the materials’ surface structures and pore-size distributions to be shaped, molded and customized. The company says it has developed these processing capabilities with an explicit and aggressive focus on cost control. To avoid the expensive processing typically associated with nanotechnology, the company has leveraged large-scale commercial processing technologies from established industries to design a production approach that is both relatively inexpensive and inherently scalable.

In addition to ultracapacitor electrodes, the company is targeting fuel cell and hydrogen storage applications.

(November 18, 2010 – BUSINESS WIRE) — Dan Siewiorek, Karen Lightman, Rich Duncombe, Vida Ilderem, and other speakers from the MEMS industry shared their visions for the future at the MEMS Executive Congress 2010. Following are summaries of their talks, from the "iPhone 20" lifetime smart-companion to seisic imaging developments, energy management, and more MEMS opportunities.

In Dan Siewiorek’s vision of the future, each of us will get an "iPhone 20" at birth. Powered by a wide range of microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, this personalized mobile device will monitor your heart rate when you exercise, help the visually impaired to grocery-shop, and remember important social clues such as people’s names, phone numbers and directions. More of a “friend for life” than a smartphone, this intelligent device will help you to navigate your environment and will sustain you on a daily basis as you age. As a professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University’s Quality of Life Center, Dr. Siewiorek has unique insight into the practical applications of MEMS sensors and contextual software for mobile phones and wearable pendants. While addressing an audience of more than 180 business executives at the 6th annual MEMS Executive Congress on November 4th, Siewiorek and his fellow panelists claimed the attention of MEMS suppliers looking for new business opportunities as well as leading OEMs eager to learn more about the commercial applications of MEMS technology.

“At MEMS Executive Congress, OEMs and end users have a conversation with the MEMS industry about emerging trends and business opportunities,” said Karen Lightman, managing director of the event’s host organization, MEMS Industry Group. "During this year’s forum, market analysts shared their latest research on what’s hot and what’s not, with an eye to market growth through 2015. Industry experts in consumer electronics, quality of life/robotics, and energy dove into the short- and long-term commercial uses of MEMS. And keynote speakers from HP and Intel offered an inside look at how two top technology companies see practical applications for MEMS within their own organizations and the global IT infrastructure.”

In his opening keynote address, Rich Duncombe, strategist, Technology Development Organization, Imaging and Printing Group, HP, reflected on the business processes behind his latest disruptive technology launch: “While the creative energy behind innovation may seem like ‘magic,’ innovation at HP results from a disciplined business development process. We innovate from our core, incorporating client-focused innovation to deliver an end-to-end solution.”

HP’s latest achievement is a wireless seismic imaging system featuring one million sensor nodes based on accelerometers that are up to 1000x more sensitive than today’s consumer-centric accelerometers. Developed in collaboration with Shell, the new system uses high-resolution seismic data to locate difficult-to-find oil and gas reservoirs.

In her closing keynote address, Vida Ilderem, Ph.D., vice president of Intel Labs and director of the Integrated Platform Research Lab for Intel Corporation, wrapped up MEMS Executive Congress with some concluding thoughts: “The technology industry at large is realizing a greater mobility vision, one that encompasses mobile platforms and architectures, pervasive connectivity, context awareness and human-computer interaction.”

Identifying sensor-intensive applications such as mobile augmented reality devices and ‘personal energy systems’ for homes, offices and college campuses, Dr. Ilderem encouraged the audience to increase sensor intelligence and ease sensor integration to meet the requirements of these emerging context-aware systems.

More voices from MEMS Executive Congress
Dean Samara-Rubio, PhD, platform architect, Energy and Utilities, Intel, believes that “we need sensing, communications, data structures and analytics in order to build an integrated node to make a truly smart home that engages the homeowner. Once we integrate this sensing capability into easily managed and interpreted systems, we may begin to make inroads into smart homes and smarter commercial buildings.”

Cleo Cabuz, CTO, Life Safety, Honeywell, highlighted energy harvesting as a significant opportunity for MEMS: “With a strong portfolio of commercially-available energy harvesting devices for wireless sensors used in home and building automation, we see widespread future potential for small, low power MEMS sensors, using energy harvested from power lines, from light switches and even from gas and air flow devices.”

One of the event’s energy success stories came from Liji Huang, PhD, founder, president and CEO, Siargo Ltd. Through MEMS-flow sensing technology, Siargo’s smart gas meters have their first commercial win. Siargo has shipped its MEMS utility gas meters to more than 17 gas companies (including China Petro) since 2008. Most recently Siargo signed a strategic agreement with Asia’s largest utility gas company, Hong Kong Towngas, to further develop and deploy this technology to its more than 11 million customers.

Jungkee Lee, PhD, principal engineer, director of Telecommunication Module Lab, Samsung, astounded Congress attendees through a use of MEMS never imagined. Dr. Lee demonstrated Samsung’s Galaxy Beam mobile phone (GT-I8520) with integrated pico projector — which employs Texas Instruments DLP pico chipset. He pointed out that another DLP-based pico-projector phone, the GT-I7410, shed some light into the lives of the trapped Chilean miners, allowing them to watch soccer games and other visual content via projected images generated by the Samsung phone.

Greg Turetzky, senior marketing director, CSR, emphasized the value of MEMS as part of a whole platform: "New classes of applications that include GPS, communication and MEMS — all integrated via software — are extremely compelling. One example might be shoes featuring an embedded GPS receiver, small MEMS sensor and mobile phone transmitter. Such ‘smart’ shoes could be used to track the whereabouts of children and Alzheimer’s patients."

“We set records at MEMS Executive Congress this year, with more overall attendees and an even stronger international representation,” offered Ms. Lightman. “With top-notch keynotes and high-caliber panels, our speakers conveyed the wealth of opportunities in MEMS technology and MEMS-enabled applications. Our attendees responded with enthusiasm, engaging with speakers in formal and informal networking venues. We have truly raised the bar for our 2011 MEMS Executive Congress!”

MEMS Executive Congress is an annual event that brings together business leaders from a broad spectrum of industries: automotive, consumer goods, energy/environmental, industrial, medical and telecom. It is a unique professional forum at which executives from companies designing and manufacturing MEMS technology sit side-by-side with their end-user customers in panel discussions and networking events to exchange ideas and information about the use of MEMS in commercial applications.

Sponsors of MEMS Executive Congress 2010 included: A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates, Analog Devices, ANSYS, Bosch Sensortec, DALSA, EV Group, Freescale Semiconductor, iSuppli, Lam Research, MEMS Investor Journal, Maxim, Okmetic, Plan Optik, SPP Process Technology Systems (SPTS), SUSS MicroTec, SVTC, Tegal Corporation and Yole Développement.

MEMS Executive Congress 2010 was held November 3-4, 2010 at the InterContinental Montelucia Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona. MEMS Executive Congress 2011 will be held November 2-3, 2011 at the Monterey Plaza Hotel and Spa. For more information, please contact MIG via phone: 412/390-1644, email: [email protected] or visit MEMS Executive Congress at: www.memscongress.com.

MEMS Industry Group (MIG) is the trade association advancing MEMS across global markets. MIG enables the exchange of non-proprietary information among members; provides reliable industry data that furthers the development of technology; and works toward the greater commercial development and use of MEMS and MEMS-enabled devices. More than 100 companies comprise MIG, including Analog Devices, Applied Materials, Bosch Sensortec, Freescale Semiconductor, GE, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Honeywell, Intel, OEM Group, Plures Technologies, Rite Track, Tecnisco and Texas Instruments. For more information, visit www.memsindustrygroup.org.

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(November 3, 2010) — Veeco Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: VECO) delivered a GEN10 Automated Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) system to the University of New Mexico (UNM) Center for High Technology Materials (CHTM).

The GEN10 was purchased through a successful instrumentation grant by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research awarded to Dr. Sanjay Krishna, Associate Director, UMN CHTM and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Krishna’s group consists of research professors, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergraduates who are investigating next-generation infrared detectors. The system is also accessible for use by the other researchers at the center, department, school and university and is available for industry to assembly specialized prototypes.

The system will also benefit small businesses by supplying wafers to them. For example, Dr. Krishna has a start-up company that will use the grown samples in an infrared camera that will permit early detection of melanomas on the skin using extremely small temperature variations. Biological sciences, in addition to energy harvesting, is the newest focus for researchers at the CHTM facility since its inception 25 years ago, with an historical concentration in electrical and optical semiconductor research.

“We’re excited about the delivery of our new automated R&D MBE system, being the first system of this kind available for use in a university setting in the U.S,” said Dr. Krishna.  “We chose the Veeco GEN10 because of its state-of-the-art design that allows researchers to grow complex crystals with better quality control than has been possible in the past. In addition, its flexible footprint design provides for efficient use of multiple growth modules for projects of interest by our various groups.” The system allows independent growth of multiple incompatible materials in a single system architecture. The GEN10 for R&D is the most recent introduction to the Veeco cluster tool product line.

Veeco makes equipment to develop and manufacture LEDs, solar panels, hard disk drives, and other devices. Learn more at www.veeco.com/mbe.

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The Grid Wants YOU!


November 1, 2010

Pete Singer
Editor-in-Chief

Supply voltages, transmission losses, long-term reliability, IEEE standards, circuit simulations – those are familiar topics for those working in the semiconductor industry. But they are of equally high interest to another group: those working to improve the electricity grid.

Certainly everyone has heard by now that "The Grid," at least in the U.S., is fairly antiquated. DOE Secretary Stephen Chu recently quipped that if Thomas Edison were to suddenly come back to life he’d have no idea how an iphone works, but he’d be quite familiar with all the elements of the electricity grid. They’ve hardly changed since Edison designed the first grid for New York city more than 100 years ago.

Certainly many people – perhaps too many – have left the semiconductor industry to pursue a career in the exciting world of photovoltaics, where the substrate is usually silicon and the processes of doping, annealing, metallization and packaging are familiar. The output of the device, however, is not processed signals, but raw power.

The world has embraced photovoltaics and other renewable energy sources such as wind, hydro, biomass and geothermal. One of the concerns moving forward is that the best of these sources – PV and wind – are inherently intermittent. Proponents of PV like to point out that although PV is intermittent (due to clouds and of course darkness), it’s actually highly predictable. Clouds don’t cause that much variability if the PV is spread out over a wide enough area, and because they are visible, it’s relatively straightforward to predict the impact on power generation on a short-term basis and even easier to predict the amount of power that will be generated the next day based on weather reports. That’s fine because power markets operate on a day to day basis.

One way to balance out that intermittency is through energy storage. Analysts see a strong, upcoming demand for energy storage as part of the grid. This will likely be a combination of some kind of central storage (i.e., a 20MW flywheel installation near a power generation station) and distributed storage (i.e., batteries next to the familiar green transformers in people’s yards). These types of energy storage are primarily driven by a need on the part of utilities for load balancing, since it’s expensive for them to constantly adjust the output of traditional power generation systems as the load varies. Energy storage may even allow them to offset or delay the requirement of additional power plants, such as a gas-fired "peaker" plants which are notoriously expensive.

In some markets, there is also value for companies and people on "the other side of the meter" to buy and store power when it is least expensive, and use the stored power during peak demand when prices are highest. Electric vehicles will also come into play, in part by helping to advance battery technology, but also by actually becoming part of the smart grid. Andy Chu, director of marketing at A123 Systems (Watertown, MA) envisions a time when utilities are so linked into the grid that they can monitor and control electric vehicle battery chargers during the night, and charge them quickly or slowly so as to optimize the load/generation equation.

This vision of the smart grid with renewable sources and energy storage working in harmony is complicated. The U.S. electric industry includes over 3,100 electric utilities. Investor owned utilities are privately-owned, represent 8% of the total, approximately 75% of generation capability and revenue. There are 2,009 municipal utilities, supplying approximately 10% of the generating capability and 15% of retail revenue. There are 912 cooperatives, operating in 47 States, accounting for 9% of total revenue and around 4% of generation.

What needs to happen to get them to work together is simple: standardization. This is where I believe those in the semiconductor industry can make an impact — volunteering to participate in standards committees. One standard of importance is IEEE P1547.8, which is focused on high-penetration, grid-connected photovoltaic technology. Among the issues being discussed: active voltage regulation, voltage and frequency ride-through, frequency trip settings (under/over voltage), operation under fault conditions, switching, power quality, monitoring and control, and dynamically controlled inverters. Getting involved is easy: check out  http://www.nrel.gov/eis/high_penetration_pv_wkshp_2010.html for more information. Your experience is needed!

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