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MIT opens new ‘window’ on PV
IMAGINE WINDOWS that not only in the Department of Electrical concentrators were developed by
provide a clear view and illuminate Engineering and Computer Science, and impregnating dyes in plastic. But the idea
rooms, but also use sunlight to efficiently Shalom Goffri, a postdoctoral associate in was abandoned because, among other
help power the building they are part of. MIT’s Research Laboratory of things, not enough of the collected light
MIT engineers report a new approach to Electronics. could reach the edges of the concentrator.
harnessing the sun’s energy that could “Professor Baldo’s project utilises The MIT engineers, experts in optical
allow just that. innovative design to achieve superior solar techniques developed for lasers and
The work, to be reported in the July conversion without optical tracking,” says organic light emitting diodes, realised
11 issue of Science, involves the creation Dr. Aravinda Kini, programme manager that perhaps those same advances could
of a novel “solar concentrator.” “Light is in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences in be applied to solar concentrators. The
collected over a large area [like a the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of result: A mixture of dyes in specific
window] and gathered, or concentrated, Science, a sponsor of the work. “This ratios, applied only to the surface of the
at the edges,” explains Marc A. Baldo, accomplishment demonstrates the critical glass, that allows some level of control
leader of the work and the Esther and importance of innovative research in over light absorption and emission. “We
Harold E. Edgerton Career Development bringing about advances in solar energy made it so the light can travel a much
Associate Professor of Electrical utilization in a cost effective manner.” longer distance,” Mapel says. “We were
Engineering. Solar concentrators in use today able to substantially reduce light
As a result, rather than covering a roof “track the sun to generate high optical transport losses, resulting in a tenfold
with expensive solar cells (the intensities, often by using large mobile increase in the amount of power
semiconductor devices that transform mirrors that are expensive to deploy and converted by the solar cells.”
sunlight into electricity), the cells only maintain,” Baldo and colleagues write in This work was also supported by the
need to be around the edges of a flat glass Science. Further, “solar cells at the focal National Science Foundation. Baldo is
panel. In addition, the focused light point of the mirrors must be cooled, and also affiliated with MIT’s Research
increases the electrical power obtained the entire assembly wastes space around Laboratory of Electronics, Microsystems
from each solar cell “by a factor of over the perimeter to avoid shadowing Technology Laboratories, and Institute for
40,” Baldo says. neighbouring concentrators.” Soldier Nanotechnologies.
Because the system is simple to The MIT solar concentrator involves a Mapel, Currie and Goffri are starting a
manufacture, the team believes that it mixture of two or more dyes that is company, Covalent Solar, to develop and
could be implemented within three years, essentially painted onto a pane of glass or commercialize the new technology.
even added onto existing solar panel plastic. The dyes work together to absorb Earlier this year Covalent Solar won two
systems to increase their efficiency by 50 light across a range of wavelengths, which prizes in the MIT $10K Entrepreneurship
percent for minimal additional cost. is then re-emitted at a different Competition. The company placed first in
In addition to Baldo, the researchers wavelength and transported across the the Energy category ($20,000) and won
involved are Michael Currie, Jon Mapel, pane to waiting solar cells at the edges. the Audience Judging Award ($10,000),
and Timothy Heidel, all graduate students In the 1970s, similar solar voted on by all who attended the awards.
Samsung and Sun Microsystems collaborate
SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS, a provider of semiconductor sector where rising cooling bills are being watched with a great
technology, announced that it has collaborated with Sun deal of concern.
Microsystems to develop a single level cell NAND flash “We have been working with Sun to develop this new 8Gb
memory device for use in solid state drives that offers much server grade SLC flash memory, which will give IT managers
higher endurance levels than any other flash memory device on the best in high density, high endurance memory design with
the market today. markedly less energy consumption than we see today,” said Jim
Offering a five fold increase in data write and erase cycles Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung
over standard SLC flash memory, Samsung’s new server grade Semiconductor, Inc. “‘Endurance up, power down’ is going to
SLC NAND memory is designed to be used in SSDs to greatly be the mantra of IT innovators at enterprises everywhere, and
extend the life cycle of any high transaction data processing server grade SLC flash is ideally situated to deliver on that
server. It is expected to deliver the highest endurance ever equation,” Elliott added.
offered in 24/7 mission critical computing. “Sun sees incredible upside to using server grade SLC
The ultra endurance server grade memory has been NAND flash to accelerate customers’ applications, and we plan
developed in close co-operation with Sun over the past several to incorporate this technology into our line of servers and
months. Probable applications for the new ultra endurance SLC storage,” said Michael Cornwell, lead technologist for flash
flash include its use in video streaming, high transaction data memory, Sun Microsystems. “Flash SSDs of this quality and
processing, search engine operations and other high speed performance when included in our systems and Open Storage
server functions. products with Solaris ZFS will revolutionise the hardware
Samsung said that its server grade SLC memory will marketplace. We are excited to be working closely with
provide a 100X increase over conventional hard drives, in the Samsung to lead this game changing technology revolution.”
number of data transfers (input/output per second or I/OPS) According to IDC, global demand for enterprise SSDs is
per watt, registering a substantial power savings in a market expected to rise to 2.24 million units in 2012.
August 2008 www.euroasiasemiconductor.com
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