Holographic Data Storage featured in Technology Review magazine
We recently spent some time talking to the folks at Technology Review about our efforts to develop holographic data storage. It was a great chance to explain how our technology works and how it is different from what other groups are doing. They recently posted an article and a video podcast on their website. We talk a little about the history of data storage at GE and then take a peek inside one of our research labs where we have our prototype holographic system running. Check it out at: technology review article.
Question: Do you know what percentage of the earth’s water is accessible freshwater?
Answer: Less than 1% of the Earth’s water is accessible freshwater (roughly 70% of the Earth’s surface is water).
Globally we are at a point in history where the demand for fresh water is growing dramatically with rapidly growing population and industrialization. However, the water supply and the quality of that supply are actually decreasing. By 2025 water scarcity could be a global crisis, with over 3 billion people in 40 different countries living in severely water scarce areas.
Nanomanufacturing Integration of nanotechnology in products
In earlier posts on nanotechnology on this blog, we have looked at the potential of nanotechnology to enable new classes of materials. As more of these properties are established and refined in the laboratory, questions about transitioning these materials into a product become relevant. The transition from the lab to pilot scale production to full scale manufacturing is a common path walked by many new technologies, but nanomaterials provide some unique opportunities and challenges.
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
Enabling “cooler” electronics
I’ve written in the past that there are a pile of GE products that have thermal challenges, and our research teams have no shortage of ideas for new thermal technologies to solve these problems. Heat pipes are one such example. A heat pipe is a device that, on the outside, looks like a rod or bar of copper, but appears to have a thermal conductivity that is several times higher than that of copper. But the heat pipe is hollow and on the inside it passively creates a fluid recirculation loop. The fluid is evaporated at the hot end of the heat pipe, travels along its length, re-condenses and the cold end, and then the liquid travels back to the hot side to start the process over again. The liquid carries the heat from one end to the other, and can do so much more efficiently than mere conduction through the solid copper walls. Heat pipes are very common in today’s electronics. In fact, practically every laptop has one or more heat pipes to distribute heat from CPU’s and GPU’s to the heat sinks elsewhere in the laptop.
Meanwhile, the cooling needs of electronics continues to escalate, and existing heat pipes have some limits. In response to these trends, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, put out a request for teams to develop an advanced Thermal Ground Plane, which in essence is a high performance planar heat pipe. GE was one of the teams selected to attempt to develop such a device.
So here’s what we are going to build. First of interest is the form factor. Most heat pipes are literally pipes, say 6 mm in diameter and a few inches long. But DARPA wanted something that looks more like a circuit board in size and scale. So we are attempting to build a heat pipe that is only 1 mm thick, but is up to 20 cm long. This is very thin! Maintaining structural integrity will be very challenging.
The other big requirement is that this device needs to be able to operate at up to 20 g’s. Depending on orientation, the g-forces can impede and even halt the flow of the liquid in a regular heat pipe, thus stopping the operation of the heat pipe and driving the temperature of the electronics through the roof. There are ways to make heat pipes work at high g’s, but then one must severely de-rate the amount of heat the heat pipe can carry. A major innovation was required.
One of the key points of innovation for this project is to leverage some of our recent advancements in nanotechnology. By carefully inventing and constructing special nano-sized features in various regions of the TGP, we believe we are going to set records for heat fluxes at high g’s.
The other thing that makes this project very daunting, but very fun, is the wide range of disciplines needed to successfully create the TGP device. A great thing about the GE Global Research Center is that we have just about every type of technologist available. So it is true that some of my thermal experts are working on this project, but they constitute only a fraction of the technologists. We’ve got a team of experts on computational heat transfer methodologies building a new suite of models to predict the performance of our TGP devices. We have chemists who are experts at fabricating new material technologies, and engineers who have devoted their research over the last several years to nano-scale multi-phase heat transfer. And we have packaging experts who are extremely knowledgeable at selecting substrate materials, bonding the TGP packages together, even how to interface the electronics to these devices in the future. Plus we have the pleasure of teaming with the University of Cincinnati and the Air Force Research Lab. The result is a diverse, world-class team of scientists who are tackling a truly hard problem. But when we succeed, you will see our TGP in a wide range of GE’s electronics products!
GE, Chrysler pressing tech accelerator to speed up PHEV development
You may have seen the recent announcement that GE has been selected to negotiate an award with the DOE for demonstration of PHEVs (Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicles). Our proposal relies upon an innovative dual-battery energy storage system capable of forty miles accumulated electric driving range. GE is partnering with Chrysler for this project. Together, we will be looking to demonstrate the right combination of energy storage solutions required for a practical PHEV.
join the conversation
comments
- Posted 2 days 13 hours ago:
Vin Smentkowski on Chemical Technologies and Materials Characterization - Posted 6 days 5 hours ago:
Richard Barrett on A more mobile future for MRI - Posted 6 days 7 hours ago:
Hugh H. Varner, Ph.D. on Chemical Technologies and Materials Characterization - Posted 6 days 9 hours ago:
Moira on Tracking my healthy “morsels” - Posted 9 days 7 hours ago:
Becky Norton on Congrats to Jim Cella, the 2010 ACS Award winner in Industrial Chemistry
editors
- 2010 Jan (22) Feb (32) Mar (9) Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
- 2009 Jan (2) Feb (6) Mar (5) Apr (8) May (3) Jun (2) Jul (3) Aug (6) Sep (6) Oct (11) Nov (7) Dec (5)
- 2008 Jan (3) Feb (1) Mar (7) Apr (3) May (4) Jun (5) Jul (4) Aug (3) Sep (2) Oct (3) Nov (4) Dec (7)
- 2007 Jan (4) Feb (1) Mar (3) Apr (2) May (4) Jun (4) Jul (2) Aug (2) Sep (1) Oct (3) Nov (2) Dec (2)
- 2006 Jan (9) Feb (6) Mar (8) Apr (4) May (3) Jun (3) Jul (4) Aug (2) Sep (8) Oct (5) Nov (4) Dec (3)