Last week was one of those times when I had a chance to see how some sensors that we’ve developed here at the research center would work on a wind turbine.

Until last week, I was convinced that I am afraid of heights but given enough safety gear (which felt like 100 pounds worth, although it was probably closer to 10), and good instruction, I made it to the top of a wind turbine and it turned out pretty well. The climb itself was a bit tiring, until we were let in on to the secret of the climb assist which lifts about 80 pounds worth of your weight making the climb up much easier and faster. The climb down was more challenging, even though you have gravity on your side. As I am not used to being on top of a 200ft ladder, I found my brain urging my arms to hold up much of my weight most of the way down. Fortunately our hosts, all expert climbers, were again very helpful in instructing us on more efficient techniques of climbing down. Before long, one gets used to it, even enough to loosen the “holding-on-for-dear-life” ladder grip.

Most of our work was in the nacelle, an area that is probably 50% larger than my office. It contains the gearbox, generator, and some control cabinets, not leaving a whole lot of floor space for our 5 laptops that at some point were running simultaneously. Some of the work needed to be done in the hub itself. To get to the hub, one needs to get on top of the nacelle, walk on the nose cone, and down into a hatch. I didn’t particularly like the idea of walking on the outside of the turbine structure. My colleague Ertugrul did that part of the walk, but then again he has tried skydiving.

After being there a week, we got all our instruments installed (with tremendous help and patience from our hosts and our expert climbers — thanks Patrick and Amos!!) We also managed to collect a couple of days worth of data to bring back before coming home. Now starts the fun part of analyzing all the data.

I really enjoy these types of field tests because they force you to be creative. As much as one can attempt to anticipate everything that can go wrong, invariably, there is at least one surprise. Dealing with these surprises on top of a wind turbine and not in a lab setting tends to require a calm analysis of the situation and the tools available to deal with it.

Here are some of my favorite photos from this trip:

When you are standing up at the ground looking up at the nacelle it is a pretty intimidating view:

Here is an image of the base of the wind turbine, next to our truck, so you can get an idea of the size comparison:

My colleague, Ertugrul, modeling some of our heavy safety equipment.  It was probably around 10 lbs but it felt like 100!:

This picture was taken in the base of the wind turbine looking up at the first set of stairs.  There were plenty more after this, but I wasn’t about to let go to take a picture!:

Here I am in my makeshift office for the week, the nacelle of the turbine:

Nice view!:

Finally, I thought this was a neat shot looking up at the turbine blades:

As you may recall, we’re working in labs around the world to drive our efforts in thin-film solar technology.   So this video doesn’t show you ALL of our solar labs but if you’d like to take a peak inside the doors of Niskayuna check it out!  And if you want to learn more about our global work in solar, you can always refer back to my colleague in Bangalore, Kamala Raghavan’s blog entry “Shining the Light on Thin Film Solar” and the video slideshow that she posted.

http://capitalregion.ynn.com/content/headlines/511576/ge-developing-next-generation-of-solar–thin-film–panels/

The longer term, higher risk ideas are initially funded at low level in a phase we call “Time to Think”. The council funds many different ideas to spread the risk and explore more ideas. For the researcher, this funding allows them to investigate the feasibility of their idea. This can be done in a many different ways: calculations or models to see if the idea is feasible, discussion with key business stakeholders to understand the requirements for their idea and understand the market impact, or literature and patent research to understand what has been done in the past. The goal of this time is to come to better understanding of the key risks which will help the researcher understand if it is worthwhile to continue looking into this area. After this phase is over, the researcher presents the findings to the Disruptive Technology council. Based on this review, several of these programs are then chosen for further funding where they can perform experiments and further research into their ideas. The goal of this process is to progress the research to a point where a key stakeholder either at the business or within the center will continue to invest in the idea and make it part of their technology roadmap.

The shorter term, business aligned ideas frequently come about due to discussions with the GE businesses about current needs or during ongoing research programs. The expectations of these ideas are higher in terms of detail of the technical feasibility already undertaken and knowledge of the market or business impact. Typically, the researchers on the selected programs will work with the particular GE business and define goals and milestones for these programs to reduce the risk to the point that the business will invest in further development.

The opportunity that these seedlings provide to define and drive research is one of the really great benefits of working at GE Global Research. This process is one way that individual employees can contribute to new products and inventions. Many of the ideas you read about in this blog (High Temp Electronics, Nano Computer) started as seedling programs in individual organizations.

So we had a laser that could burn a pattern in the paper – or right through it, given the chance. The next thing needed was a system that could direct the beam at the proper speed in the pattern of the GE logo. In our micromachining lab, this is pretty simple to do.

First, we load the geometry of the GE logo into a software program. This program then controls two galvanometer scanners, with a mirror mounted on each. The beam hits the first mirror, which directs it left and right, and then hits the second mirror, which directs it up and down. Within one second, we were able to scribe a 2″ wide GE logo onto a piece of black paper.

After working with it for some time now, I still think it’s really cool. But what’s even cooler is that this is just one tool, out of thousands, that we use daily at the research center.  The photos below were taken by my friend and colleague, Vijay Paruchuru, who works in the optics lab at GE Global Research. In addition to his work in the lab (and as a volunteer during demonstrations at CES), Vijay is a part-time photographer.

This quotation, while appropriate today, is taken from a review article in the Proceedings of the 1959 Conference on Silicon Carbide, by Robert N. Hall of GE Global Research. At that time, interest in silicon as a semiconductor was increasing, and while silicon carbide (SiC) was a known material, the challenges in realizing high quality SiC materials and devices were steep placing tall constraints on progress.

Fast forward more than fifty years to the Energy Conversion Advanced Technology (ECAT) program today, where SiC is the focus of novel power device technology that stands to benefit many areas of power conversion and distribution.

Significant advances have been made in the quality, costs and range of available SiC materials and wafers, which offers several key advantages over Si technology for power devices via a highly robust nature. Combined with the ECAT program focus on the design, fabrication and testing of SiC metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs), GE Global Research has recently demonstrated world-class performance of these power switches in both single, discrete device packages as well as with multiple chips integrated into a power module. This progress has been made possible by the depth and breadth of unique GE Global Research expertise in semiconductor materials & devices, packaging and power conversion arenas, combined with deep application knowledge from GE’s Aviation business as well as others.

Since 2004, the Micro and Nano Structures Technology (MNST) organization has recognized team members for ‘excellence in innovation and technical content in an MNST led project having a significant impact on a GE business or Strategic Partner.’ This award was named for Robert N. Hall.  In addition to his work in laser technologies, some of his greatest accomplishments include key developments in understanding dopants and electrical transport in semiconductors, a novel understanding of what was then a new form of recombination of holes and electrons that famously bears his name along with Shockley and Read, and power devices and electronics.

Fittingly, the most recent winner of the Robert N. Hall award was to the SiC MOSFET and packaging team. With continued progress, this program will pioneer key advancements in power conversion technology for GE’s businesses to meet opportunities presented by major trends towards increased electrification.

The Robert N. Hall award for MNST and projects such as the SiC MOSFET project keep the legacy of Dr. Hall’s novel achievements and teamwork alive and well. To go along with this entry, I have included the next video in the series from Marshall Jones’ interview with Robert from last week. Above, you see a video of Dr. Hall discussing some of the technical challenges that need to be overcome in order to patent the invention for the laser diode and the roles of his team members on the project.

This blog entry was written by Peter Sandvik, manager of the Semiconductor Technology Laboratory.

Places like jet engines, deep wells, or under the hood of a car can also get very hot. Temperatures above 200 degrees Celsius are not uncommon, and could be significantly hotter in some locations by the core of a jet engine. In these situations, fanning the electronics does almost nothing to keep the device working properly because the environment around the electronics is also hot. It is these types of applications for which we are exploring electronic materials that can operate despite the high heat environment.

In this video of my colleague, Vinny, you will see a demonstration of a high-temperature electronic whistle operating on a hot plate that is heated to 300 degrees Celsius, that is 572 Fahrenheit. This is hotter than the typical broiler setting you’ll find in most ovens. Check out how Vinny demonstrates the functionality of the electronics through the whistle and the heat of the hot plate… by frying an egg.

While we’re still a way off from a laptop or cell phone that can work inside an oven, we’ve been working on electronics for sensing in environments that have historically been too harsh for electronics. Who knows what we’ll be cooking up next?

Our modeling efforts for cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin film photovoltaics (PV) are comprehensive. It includes electronic structure theory, microstructure evolution and continuum theories for transport.  These computational techniques provide us with deeper understanding of physics and material phenomena occurring at various length and time scales. There have been efforts in each of these areas. However, no one has studied CdTe system using all these approaches simultaneously. This is essential to accelerate CdTe PV research and this is what we are driving for at GE Global Research.

The modeling capabilities we have here, along with experimental data from PrimeStar and and our GE Global Research site in Niskayuna, will help us correlate the physics to the device performance. Such studies along with predictive models at subatomic level will enable us to build transfer functions in order to optimize device performance.

It is very exciting to be a part of this program that is moving towards achieving breakthrough efficiencies. It is also good to be contributing to this program that has great relevance in the present day energy scenario.

Read the full press release on our solar announcement here.

A lot of the energy sources we’re accustomed to come from underground.  Petroleum, coal and natural gas are all harvested from the depths of the earth and have been our primary energy sources for many years.  But geothermal energy has been gaining a lot of attention in recent years.  Though also buried deep into the earth, this source is not a material we burn to produce energy, it is the heat of the earth itself.

As one goes deeper below the earth’s surface, the temperature rises somewhere between 10-50C for every 1000 meters.  Now imagine drilling a well that gets to temperatures of about 300C, and then pumping water in that well; the temperature is hot enough that the water turns into steam.  This steam can be used to run a steam turbine and generate clean electricity.  In order to run the steam turbine efficiently and continue generating constant energy output over the life of the system, one needs to know the conditions in the well in real-time and use that information to control parameters relating to the turbine operation.

There is only one problem with that: the well is about 10km deep (half the length of Manhattan island), and the temperature at the bottom of the well is 300C.  At very high temperatures, electrons leak out of the electrical circuits and sensors; we call this leakage current.  Most conventional electronics, even the ones rated for military applications, can only withstand temperatures of 125C, possibly 150C.  At 300C leakage current of conventional electronics is almost 32,000 times higher than at 150C; conventional packages and interconnects fail.  Long term geothermal well monitoring requires electronics that can survive in the environment for thousands of hours.  Conventional electronics incorporating complex packaging and cooling designs may enable the sensing system to survive and function for a few hours in such a high temperature environment, but practical long-term survivability and functionality requires a substantial shift from the conventional.

Working in high temperature electronics is an exciting field, as new applications continue to be explored daily.

Silicon Carbide (SiC) is a wide bandgap material that is particularly well suited for high temperature applications.  At GE Global Research, we have been working with this material for close to two decades.  It was back in 1994 when GE demonstrated the world’s first operational amplifier.  Since then a lot of advances have been made, but a lot of challenges still remain.  That’s where we come in.  We’ve been looking at combining advances in SiC materials and processes with circuit architectures and packaging to enable systems that can operate at temperatures that are otherwise not possible with conventional electronics.  Next week, one of my colleagues will be filming a video demonstration on this topic, so much more to come on this in the future, stay tuned!

This year’s theme was Bridging Science and Society. There are many fascinating thematic sessions here delving into all aspects of science, from undergraduate education, to how we can create a zero carbon production energy economy, to whether neutrinos are the reason for the existence of life, to the ethical and policy implications of the intelligence of dolphins. Needless to say, it is my first time at this great meeting and I find it to be a fascinating and thought provoking conference.

Dr. S. Thomas Picraux of Los Alamos National Lab organized a session on “Nanotechnology: Will Nanomaterials Revolutionize Energy Applications”. This was a fascinating session, kicked-off by Dr. Arthur Nozik of the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, CO. He discussed how quantum structures may be used in the novel solar cells, including those using multiple-exciton generation (MEG) and related concepts in quantum dots. Prof. David Cahill from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) discussed the challenges in harnessing the enormous quantity of wasted heat energy generated worldwide by using nanostructures in thermoelectric and other thermal conversion devices.

My talk, entitled “Industrial Scale Implementation of Nanomaterials: A Case Study in Solar Energy” gave a broad overview of the various types of nanostructures being considered in future photovoltaic applications, a detailed discussion of our work on nanostructured solar cells, and an overview of the manufacturing challenges and requirements that must be considered if we are to develop novel technologies with high efficiency and low cost. Incidentally, in a separate session Prof. Nathan Lewis from the California Institute of Technology made the point that if we are to help curb global warming caused by green house gases using solar photovoltaics, we need to develop not only low cost photovoltaic technologies but also ones that require minimal energy during manufacture. The session continued with Dr. Julia Phillips from Sandia National Lab, who discussed the opposite problem of energy generation, energy utilization, by describing the potential ways of using nanotechnology to improve the performance of light emitting diodes (LED). Finally, Prof. Yi Cui from Stanford University focused on the problem of energy storage by highlighting his group’s recent work on nanowire electrodes for batteries and flexible nanostructure papers for ultra-capacitors.

The session ended with a brief panel discussion in which we were asked about topics such as water utilization in manufacturing and costs of nanomaterials in the future. It was a fun discussion.

Other highlights of the conference included a plenary talk by Eric Langer giving a scorecard on the Obama administrations 1st year with regards to science & technology policy, a session on nano-bio-technology, and a plenary talk on science below the sea by Maria McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Thanks for your continued interest and as always I look forward to any thoughts and feedback.

Thanks for checking in and we’ll be back soon with another update from the Global Research Clean Room.

But, what words come to your mind when you think about solar energy? Do you picture large expensive installations? Not too many people picture thin, flexible and cheap solar panels. That is what my colleague Danielle and her team are working on. Thin film semiconductor technology in conjunction with advanced coatings is revolutionizing solar energy. In this video Danielle talks about these exciting new technologies–take a look! There are a lot of challenges ahead of us in meeting our energy demands, but I find it very encouraging to see the technologies that are coming to bear in these areas. I hope you do as well.

When I first started my job, I had an idea of what an electrical engineer at GE Global Research might do, but I could not have imagined the variety of projects and technologies that I would get to be a part of over the years. I am a technologist in the Micro and Nano Structures Technology organization, and I work on electronics and sensors that cover a wide range of applications from appliances to aircraft engines to medical devices and few more things in between. Besides the privilege of working with brilliant people every day, this variety is what I love most about my job. In this blog, I hope to share with you some of the technologies that my colleagues and I are involved in and hear any thoughts you may have. So check back soon.

Hi All,

I’m Stacey Kennerly, bringing you another video blog entry from the clean room. In the last video, Ron gave you a little bit of an overview of the size and scope of our clean room (like the fact that we’re working on a scale that is about 160 times smaller than a strand of hair!). I wanted to tell you about one of the projects that we’ve worked on in the clean room.

The little microchip I am holding in the video could be used to evaluate gases like the air around you for its chemical content. For example, this tiny die could be used as part of a sensor system to alert someone if there is a harmful release of a hazardous gas or chemical agent. It looks simple, but this part is made up of six individual layers that are bonded together. It takes over 250 steps to construct this chip! Even though the manufacturing process was complex, we were able to produce an initial prototype in less than 10 months. We’ll be reporting results from this work at this year’s AVS and ASME IMECE conferences.

Check it out!

In the clean room we are working on the research and development of MEMs, Nano, Wide Band Gap, Photovoltaics, OLEDs, Flexible Electronics, and X-ray device and detection technology. In the coming weeks we’ll post more videos discussing some of our technology projects a bit deeper, so stay tuned!

Nanotechnology truly entered the national consciousness and public policy with the establishment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in 2000. A status report of the NNI observes that the years leading up to around 2005 were focused on fundamental research and ‘horizontal’ multi-disciplinary R&D with relevance to multiple application areas. The report predicts that the next few years will see a shift in focus to ‘vertical’ industrial areas.

Along a similar vein, a recent report [1] points out that nanotechnology represents a value chain and not an industry in itself. Thus nanotechnology is comparable to the interstate highway system and will add to the value proposition of all users that use the infrastructure. The report also postulates how nanotechnology could be exploited across industry value chains, from basic materials to intermediate products to final goods. The report presents separate forecasts by each value chain stage as well as by sector and region. In 2014, it projects that 4% of general manufactured goods, 50% of electronics and IT products, and 16% of goods in healthcare and life sciences by revenue will incorporate emerging nanotechnology. The report [1] predicts that nanotechnology’s growth will occur in phases. In the first phase, nanotechnology is being incorporated selectively into high-end products. In 2004 revenues from products incorporating emerging nanotechnology was about $13 billion, $8.5 billion of which lies in automotive and aerospace applications. The report predicts that from 2010 onwards, nanotechnology will become commonplace in manufactured goods, with revenues rising to $2.6 trillion in 2014. Healthcare and life sciences applications will finally become significant in this period as nano-enabled pharmaceuticals and medical devices emerge from lengthy human trials.

However, not all attempts to make this transition are likely to succeed. In particular, it is unlikely that nanomaterials will dramatically alter the nature of a product or lead to a new product if an entire value chain from nanomaterial to end product has to be developed, since the time to market would probably be too long or the return on investment too low. Success is most likely in those areas where suitably tailored nanomaterials can be integrated seamlessly into an existing value chain while simultaneously preserving the benefits of the nanoengineered property.

A key question that policymakers, technologists and corporations need to address is the nanomanufacturing infrastructure that is needed to enable such a value chain. It is most likely that such an infrastructure will only be established when it is catalyzed at the national or international level. Several government agencies in the US are recognizing the need to transition the advances in nanoscience into commercial applications. The Industrial Technology Program of the Department of Energy recently organized a Nanomanufacturing for Energy Efficiency workshop to address some of these issues [2]. The pace of establishment of such a nanomanufacturing infrastructure is likely to be the key determinant on the magnitude of impact nanotechnology has in our daily lives.

[1]: http://www.luxresearchinc.com/press/RELEASE_SizingReport.pdf

[2] : http://www.bcsmain.com/mlists/files/NanoWorkshop_report.pdf

Hello everyone … Here’s a brief update on some exciting developments in micro and nano-mechanics at GE Global Research. Some quick background… I am a Senior MicroSystems Project Manager in Global Research’s Micro and Nano Structures Technologies (MNST) organization. Our organization is about 250 people strong at GE across ourglobal sites. We’ve been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years with major developments in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), microfluidics, wide band gap devices, harsh environment applications, packaging, thin films, solar cells, specialized electronics, digital X-ray and nanotechnology to name a few! In the area of MEMS, we are developing various novel devices for applications of interest to several GE businesses. We are also performing advanced research in nano-enabled MEMS (NEMS).

It was quite an opportunity when DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) invited me to the DC area back in 2006 for discussions on how we can keep pace with Moore’s law – in other words, how we can continue to double the performance of computers every 2 years or so. Today, solid-state transistors are the fundamental building blocks or switching elements of a logic device. Unfortunately, silicon transistors are not ideal switches – they are leaky when they turn off and don’t do very well in high temperature environments. These issues work against the paradigm of scaling – putting more transistors in less space. The industry also takes a lot of trouble to make sure that these chips run cool.

DARPA currently funds GE and other institutions as well for investigating tiny mechanical NEMS switches that can switch extremely fast – these can potentially get around the limitations of transistors. However, several aspects of this technology still remain to be proven. Computerworld recently interviewed both myself and the Principal Investigator (PI) on this project, LoucasTsakalakos. Other team members in this project include: Marco Aimi, Joleyn Balch, Albert Byun, Jody Fronheiser, Joseph Iannotti, Christopher Keimel, Xuefeng Wang and Le Yan. This is a great example of how we work collaboratively at GE Global Research; in this case, combining several MEMS technologies that we are developing with the unique Nanotechnologies that Dr. Tsakalakos and various teams across the center are developing.

Here is a link to the article titled “Different engines: The return of the mechanical computer”.

The article talks about the efforts of GE and others towards creating the basic elements of a mechanical computer. The technologies we develop could have potential benefits across several GE businesses in the long term. Once we can prove that the technology is small, reliable and cost-effective, we may open the doors to new paradigms that keep us on track with Moore’s law for many years to come!

Hello everyone. I wanted to give a quick update on the Nano Photovoltaics work we are doing at GRC. My colleagues, Joleyn Balch, Jody Fronheiser, Dr. Bas Korevaar, Dr. Oleg Sulima, and Dr. Jim Rand, and I just had a paper published in Applied Physics Letters describing our recent demonstration of a silicon nanowire-based solar cell. This work builds on the previous optical properties studies I discussed recently in that it shows a functional large-area device using nanowire arrays with a promising photo-current and broadband external quantum efficiency.

The cells were fabricated on a metal foil substrate, thus showing potential for future roll-to-roll manufacturing of such devices. We used standard, scaleable processes to grow the nanowires and to fabricate p-n junctions conformally around the nanowires. The use of conformal p-n junctions allows for de-coupling light absorption from charge transport. In a standard solar cell the active material must be thick enough to absorb all the sunlight (for silicon this is > 125 micrometers), however, as charge carriers diffuse back to the p-n junction many are lost due to non-radiative recombination. In these nanowire-based devices the minority carriers must only diffuse a few hundred nanometers to reach the charge-separating junction. The nanowire cells also showed the expected improvements in their optical properties. While the power conversion efficiency in these devices is still low, and much work remains to improve the performance, this nanoscale solar cell architecture and processing approach has promise to create a new paradigm in solar cell manufacturing and device design in the future.

For more information about our work, please go to Applied Physics Letters. You can also visit the Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science & Technology, which highlights the latest research in nanotechnology from various science journals and has our paper from Applied Physics Letters on their site.

I just have seen that GE.com features our recent work with tropical butterflies that we have published in Nature Photonics. We have discovered that nanostructures of butterfly wing scales selectively respond to different vapors. This selective response is observed as very stable slight changes in iridescent colors of butterfly wings.

Numerous times after our paper was published, I was asked how did I come up with this idea? It is simple and can be summarized in several key steps: (1) to know your field of research; (2) to understand clearly the unmet needs; (3) to know the solutions that were tried and worked in the past; (4) to be open to non-traditional, disruptive solutions; (5) to understand other scientific areas and imagine how the observations or solutions from those areas can be applied to your unmet need.

My concept of using scales of tropical butterflies for vapor sensing came from understanding the principles of photonic sensors. While these photonic sensors based on structural color can be more attractive that those based on organic dyes (organic dyes tend to photobleach), the unmet need in photonic sensors is their poor selectivity – one still needs to have an array of such sensors for more selective vapor detection. Accidentally, I came across an image of a tropical butterfly at a very high magnification where the details of butterfly wings were at the nanoscale range. It became clear to me that these features can be used for vapor sensing and we may be able to get more selective vapor responses because of the well-organized hierarchical nanostructure of the butterfly wing scale.

Overall, my approach surprisingly matches with a quote from Dave Grusin, composer and jazz musician, that I have seen on a paper coffee cup: ‘In my career I’ve found that ‘thinking outside the box’ works better if I know what’s ‘inside the box.”

Our research team studied vapor responses in great detail and characterized the butterfly scales with great nano-characterization tools we have at GE Global Research. Our corporate team did a great job explaining on GE web page the vapor-sensing concept and putting an animation together.