New ‘FinFETs’ Promising For Smaller Transistors, More Powerful Chips

Researchers are making progress in developing new types of transistors, called finFETs, which use a finlike structure instead of the conventional flat design, possibly enabling engineers to create faster and more compact circuits and computer chips. The fins are made not of silicon, but from a material called indium-gallium-arsenide, as shown in this illustration. (Credit: Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University)

Purdue University researchers are making progress in developing a new type of transistor that uses a finlike structure instead of the conventional flat design, possibly enabling engineers to create faster and more compact circuits and computer chips.

The fins are made not of silicon, like conventional transistors, but from a material called indium-gallium-arsenide. Called finFETs, for fin field-effect-transistors, researchers from around the world have been working to perfect the devices as potential replacements for conventional transistors.

In work led by Peide Ye, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, the Purdue researchers are the first to create finFETs using a technology called atomic layer deposition. Because atomic layer deposition is commonly used in industry, the new finFET technique may represent a practical solution to the coming limits of conventional silicon transistors.

“We have just demonstrated the proof of concept here,” Ye said.

Findings are detailed in three research papers being presented during the International Electron Devices Meeting on Dec. 7-9 in Baltimore. The work is led by doctoral student Yanqing Wu, who provided major contributions for two of the papers.

The finFETs might enable engineers to sidestep a problem threatening to derail the electronics industry. New technologies will be needed for industry to keep pace with Moore’s law, an unofficial rule stating that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles about every 18 months, resulting in rapid progress in computers and telecommunications. Doubling the number of devices that can fit on a computer chip translates into a similar increase in performance. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to continue shrinking electronic devices made of conventional silicon-based semiconductors.

In addition to making smaller transistors possible, finFETs also might conduct electrons at least five times faster than conventional silicon transistors, called MOSFETs, or metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors.

“The potential increase in speed is very important,” Ye said. “The finFETs could enable industry to not only create smaller devices, but also much faster computer processors.”

Transistors contain critical components called gates, which enable the devices to switch on and off and to direct the flow of electrical current. In today’s chips, the length of these gates is about 45 nanometers, or billionths of a meter.

The semiconductor industry plans to reduce the gate length to 22 nanometers by 2015. However, further size reductions and boosts in speed are likely not possible using silicon, meaning new designs and materials will be needed to continue progress.

Indium-gallium-arsenide is among several promising semiconductor alloys being studied to replace silicon. Such alloys are called III-V materials because they combine elements from the third and fifth groups of the periodical table.

Creating smaller transistors also will require finding a new type of insulating layer essential for the devices to switch off. As gate lengths are made smaller than 22 nanometers, the silicon dioxide insulator used in conventional transistors fails to perform properly and is said to “leak” electrical charge.

One potential solution to this leaking problem is to replace silicon dioxide with materials that have a higher insulating value, or “dielectric constant,” such as hafnium dioxide or aluminum oxide.

The Purdue research team has done so, creating finFETs that incorporate the indium-gallium-arsenide fin with a so-called “high-k” insulator. Previous attempts to use indium-gallium-arsenide finFETs to make devices have failed because too much current leaks from the circuit.

The researchers are the first to “grow” hafnium dioxide onto finFETs made of a III-V material using atomic layer deposition. The approach could make it possible to create transistors using the thinnest insulating layers possible — only a single atomic layer thick.

The finlike design is critical to preventing current leakage, in part because the vertical structure can be surrounded by an insulator, whereas a flat device has the insulator on one side only.

The work is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Semiconductor Research Consortium and is based at the Birck Nanotechnology Center in Purdue’s Discovery Park.

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Adapted from materials provided by Purdue University. Original article written by Emil Venere.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091110171746.htm

Making Carbon Nanotubes into Long Fibers

Nanotube fiber: This fiber, which is about 40 micrometers in diameter, is made up of carbon nanotubes.   Credit: Rice University

Researchers have taken a step towards making carbon nanotubes into transmission lines.

By Katherine Bourzac

A new method for assembling carbon nanotubes has been used to create fibers hundreds of meters long. Individual carbon nanotubes are strong, lightweight, and electrically conductive, and could be valuable as, among other things, electrical transmission wires. But aligning masses of the nanotubes into well-ordered materials such as fibers has proven challenging at a scale suitable for manufacturing. By processing carbon nanotubes in a solution called a superacid, researchers at Rice University have made long fibers that might be used as lightweight, efficient wires for the electrical grid or as the basis of structural materials and conductive textiles.

Others have made carbon-nanotube fibers by pulling the tubes from solid hair-like arrays or by spinning them like wool as they emerge from a chemical reactor. The problem with starting from a solid, says Rice chemical engineering professor Matteo Pasquali, is that “the alignment is not spectacular, and these methods are difficult to scale up.” The better aligned and ordered the individual nanotubes in a larger structure, the better the collective structure’s electrical and mechanical properties. Using the Rice methods, well-aligned nanotube fibers can be made on a large scale, shot out from a nozzle similar to a showerhead.

The late Nobel laureate Richard Smalley started the Rice project in 2001. Smalley knew solution-processing would be a good way to assemble nanotube fibers and films because of nanotubes’ shape. Carbon nanotubes are much longer than they are wide, so when they’re in a flowing solution, they line up like logs floating down a river. But carbon nanotubes aren’t soluble in conventional solvents. The Rice group laid the foundations for liquid processing of the nanotubes five years ago, when they discovered that sulfuric acid brings the nanotubes into solution by coating their surfaces with positively charged ions.

For the past five years, the Rice group has used microscopy to study nanotube solutions made in several different acids. “There was no quick experiment,” Pasquali says. “We had to be very deliberate. We now understand how the solution processing works, the knobs to control the nanotubes, and how to predict what they’ll do.” The best solvent for processing the tubes, according to work published this month in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, is chlorosulphonic acid. Nanotubes spontaneously dissolve in this acid at concentrations 1,000 times greater than they do in any other solvent.

The Rice group has used acid processing methods to assemble carbon nanotubes into fibers 50 micrometers thick and hundreds of meters long. “There are no limitations on the fiber length,” says Pasquali. The Rice group demonstrated its assembly method with high-quality, single-walled carbon nanotubes.

So far, the group has made fibers that are highly conductive but not as strong as other carbon materials. Pasquali says the strength of the fibers could probably be improved tenfold by using longer carbon nanotubes. “We’re now working on a project for making electrical transmission lines,” says Pasquali. “Metallic nanotubes conduct electricity better than copper, they’re lighter, and they fail less often.”

One important hurdle for large-scale manufacturing of carbon nanotubes remains: Today, there aren’t any good methods for making the nanotubes themselves in large, pure batches. In order to make nanotube transmission lines, for example, the Rice group would need to start with a large batch of nanotubes containing all metallic nanotubes and no semiconducting ones. Last month, chemists at the Honda Research Institute published a paper in Science describing a method for making large amounts of metallic nanotubes that Pasquali says is promising. “For transmission lines you need to make tons, and there are no methods now to do that,” he says. “We are one miracle away.”

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23921/

Contact Lenses that Respond to Light

Seeing the light: A new contact lens technology responds to UV light. The contact lens on the left (blue) contains photochromic dyes that darken the lens in the presence of UV light. The contact lens on the right (clear) contains no dyes.   Credit: Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology

UV-responsive dyes embedded in contact lenses can quickly adapt.

By Jennifer Chu

Transition lenses–which darken automatically in response to bright sunlight–have been available for eyeglasses for 40 years. But adapting this flexibility to contact lenses has proven challenging. Now researchers in Singapore have developed UV-responsive, or photochromic, lenses that darken when exposed to ultraviolet light, protecting the eyes against the sun’s damaging rays, and return to normal in UV’s absence.

The key is a novel polymer laced with an intricate network of nano-sized tunnels that can be filled with dyes. Initial studies have shown that the technology performs faster than the transition sunglasses on the market today, says Jackie Ying, director of the Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) in Singapore, and developer of the lenses. The research is part of a broader effort at IBN to develop new materials for contact lenses that can dispense drugs and diagnose diseases.

Conventional transition sunglasses are coated with millions of molecules of photochromic dyes, which are transparent when out of the sun. These molecules change shape when UV light hits, enabling them to absorb UV light and triggering the darkening of the lens. When UV light disappears, the molecules change back to their original shape and transparent appearance.

Few previous attempts have been made to design transition contact lenses, largely because it’s difficult to apply dye coatings uniformly to the delicate, soft surface of a contact lens. Ying and her colleagues got around this by developing a contact lens that embeds dyes uniformly throughout the material. This approach allowed them to pack more dye molecules into the material, Ying says, giving the contact lens greater sensitivity to light and thus a faster response.

Researchers created the spongy nanostructure material by mixing specific combinations of water, an oil solution with monomers commonly used in contact lenses, and a novel surfactant– a compound that encourages mixing between water and oil solutions. The resulting material is studded with tiny pores and tunnels, which can be loaded with agents such as UV-sensitive dyes.

The lens material’s porous structure provides a flexible environment for dyes to transform from dark to light and back again, says Edwin Chow, team leader and senior research scientist at IBN. “If the polymer is too rigid, the dye is stuck and can’t transform,” says Chow. “This pore structure and polymer happens to give the best environment for dyes to react quickly.”

Article Continues – http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23922/

Flipping A Photonic Shock Wave

(Top left) Schematic of Cerenkov radiation in a conventional natural medium with positive refractive index, such as water, in which the radiation falls in a cone in the forward direction. (Bottom left) Schematic of backward Cerenkov radiation in a left-handed medium, showing the reversed cone. (Right) Schematic of the two-dimensional experimental configuration and the photographic image of the negative index metamaterials used to demonstrate backward Cerenkov radiation. The metamaterials consist of in-plane split-ring resonators and metal wires.

Physicists have developed a new metamaterial structure that successfully demonstrates reverse Cerenkov radiation. They have directly observed a reverse shock wave of light in a specially tailored structure known as a left-handed metamaterial.

Although it was first predicted over forty years ago, this is the first unambiguous experimental demonstration of the effect. The research is reported in Physical Review Letters and highlighted in the November 2 issue of Physics.

Light moving in a vacuum sets the ultimate speed limit, but light travels more slowly through materials like glass and air. Speedy electrons or other charged particles can briefly outrun light in matter, producing a shock wave in the form of a cone of light known as Cerenkov radiation. The eerie blue glow in the cooling water of nuclear reactors is result of particles moving faster than the speed of light in water. In normal substances, the radiation is emitted in a forward cone. Left-handed metamaterials, however, have unusual effects on light that should reverse the cone’s direction.

When light enters a normal material like glass, it changes direction, allowing us to make lenses that correct poor vision. When light enters a left-handed metamaterial, the change is opposite to the direction that would occur in normal materials. (The materials are “left-handed” because they affect light oppositely from “right-handed” normal materials.) This means that the cone of Cerenkov radiation from a faster-than-light particle should propagate backward in a left-handed metamaterial. But experimental difficulties have prevented confirmation of the effect despite its prediction in 1968.

Now a team of physicists at Zhejiang University in China and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a new metamaterial structure that successfully demonstrates reverse Cerenkov radiation. Instead of injecting faster-than-light particles into their metamaterial, they created an optical analogue of particles moving at twice light speed. This allowed them to produce a much stronger burst of reverse Cerenkov light than they could have gotten with a real particle beam. Besides verifying a decades-old theoretical prediction, the experiment suggests a new possible application of left-handed metamaterials as detectors of high-speed particles in accelerators and other experiments.

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Adapted from materials provided by American Physical Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091102111841.htm

Liquid Crystals that Light Up

Liquid light: This prototype display shows a novel type of liquid crystal that emits different colors of light when electrically stimulated.   Credit: Polar OLED

New OLED and LCD displays could be made using a hybrid material.

By Duncan Graham-Rowe

A material containing electroluminescent liquid crystals could be used to make new kinds of OLED and LCD displays.

Liquid crystals are normally used in displays to polarize the light from a white backlight. But research by Stephen Kelly, head of chemistry at the University of Hull, in the UK, and physicist Mary O’Neill, also at the University of Hull, has shown that it is possible to make liquid crystals that emit light when electrically stimulated.

Kelly made this discovery in 2000. He and O’Neill have since worked to refine the technology. Now a company called Polar OLED, based in Leeds, UK, has been spun out to work with display companies to commercialize it. Polar OLED’s material can be used to make novel light-emitting diodes for OLED displays, as well as simple but higher-quality backlights for traditional LCDs, says Kelly.

Liquid crystals have long been known to be capable of photoluminescence–the ability to emit light when exposed to photons. But to make liquid crystals emit light when electrically stimulated, it was necessary to improve the transport of charge through the material.

Kelly’s approach achieves this by using liquid crystals containing organic compounds called aromatics. “The more aromatic rings you have, the more luminescence you get,” says Kelly. By exposing solutions of these materials to ultraviolet light, the compounds form into fixed polymerized networks that link up the liquid crystals. Depending upon the precise chemistry employed, the resulting hybrid material can be made to emit different wavelengths of light, corresponding to different colors, when a current is applied.

Red, green, and blue light-emitting liquid crystals can then be used to create individual subpixels for an OLED display. They can also be stacked on top of each other to produce white light for use in an LCD backlight, says Kelly.

High resolution OLED displays, made up of individual pixels of light-emitting organic materials, have already started to appear on the market. They offer superior brightness and viewing angles compared to LCDs, but they tend to be expensive because of the high-temperature evaporation processes used to make them.

Cambridge Display Technologies, also based in the UK, is developing a cheaper solution-based approach for printing OLED displays. But Kelly says it is hard to deposit layers of different polymers close together, or on top of one another, without destabilizing them. “The second layer will dissolve the first and the third dissolves the first two,” says Kelly.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23909/

Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics

Silicon on silk: This clear silk film, about one centimeter squared, has six silicon transistors on its surface. These flexible devices can be implanted in mice like the one in this image without causing any harm, and the silk degrades over time. The orange liquid on the hair is a disinfectant used during the surgery.  Credit: Rogers/Omenetto

Biodegradable circuits could enable better neural interfaces and LED tattoos.

By Katherine Bourzac

By building thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates, researchers have made electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body. So far the research group has demonstrated arrays of transistors made on thin films of silk. While electronics must usually be encased to protect them from the body, these electronics don’t need protection, and the silk means the electronics conform to biological tissue. The silk melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don’t cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.

“Current medical devices are very limited by the fact that the active electronics have to be ‘canned,’ or isolated from the body, and are on rigid silicon,” says Brian Litt, associate professor of neurology and bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Litt, who is working with the silk-silicon group to develop medical applications for the new devices, says they could interact with tissues in new ways. The group is developing silk-silicon LEDs that might act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system.

Last year, John Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, developed flexible, stretchable silicon circuits whose performance matches that of their rigid counterparts. To make these devices biocompatible, Rogers’s lab collaborated with Fiorenzo Omenetto and David Kaplan, professors of bioengineering at Tufts University in Medford, MA, who last year reported making nanopatterned optical devices from silkworm-cocoon proteins.

To make the devices, silicon transistors about one millimeter long and 250 nanometers thick are collected on a stamp and then transferred to the surface of a thin film of silk. The silk holds each device in place, even after the array is implanted in an animal and wetted with saline, causing it to conform to the tissue surface. In a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the researchers report that these devices can be implanted in animals with no adverse effects. And the performance of the transistors on silk inside the body doesn’t suffer.

Article Continues- http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23847/?a=f

Side effect of plastic: Aggressive Kids

Plastics containing Bisphenol-A have been linked to child misbehavior

Yes we know, everything causes cancer, nothing is safe for our kids, a lot of paranoia, right?

Sometimes these concerns are for real. A chemical of significant importance to parents and scientists these days is Bisphenol-A (BPA). BPA is a common chemical used in plastics for increased flexibility and molding. It can be found in your child’s plastic sippy cup, binkies, and even canned food. The lining found inside some canned foods is very similar to high density plastics, thus likely to contain significant levels of BPA. Numerous studies have proven that BPA can negatively impact your health. Experts have advised people to shop for BPA-free products. In general, avoiding plastics whenever possible is a good idea.

Read the label before you purchase that pair of dangly keys or canned mac’n’cheese.

Research Reveals Unpleasant News

Leaching is the process of a chemical seeping out of its original binding and into its surroundings. A university study was conducted to determine the leaching abilities of plastic bottles wherein the interaction between warm liquids and polycarbonate plastics released Bisphenol A (BPA) into the drinking solution. During the Harvard study, each student was given two polycarbonate bottles, which were not to be cleaned in the dishwasher (to void increased heat) and filled only with cold water. The students’ urine samples came back positive for a BPA increase of 69 percent. Is this a concern? The unfortunate answer is “yes” because BPA has been shown to alter the endocrine system causing early sexual development. Changes in fetal development, sperm production, and malfunctioning hormones are also results of BPA ingestion.

Recently, the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill released a study, the first of its kind, linking behavioral problems in children from women that were exposed to BPA during pregnancy. The study measured levels of BPA in urine samples at three different stages of pregnancy- the first at 16 weeks, then at 26 weeks and finally at birth. The results showed that the women who had the highest levels of BPA in their systems at the earliest stages of pregnancy had daughters who were more aggressive and hyperactive. To the scientists’ surprise, girls seemed to be the most affected while boys didn’t have a big difference in aggression but instead became more anxious and depressed. The greatest effects caused seem to be those of the earliest exposures.

Most women can be affected even before they know they are pregnant, which can later cause even greater problems for their unborn children. Last year Canada became the first country to ban BPA in baby bottles and Wal-Mart and Toys-R-Us have announced they will stock only BPA-free bottles.

Article continues: http://www.sierraclubgreenhome.com/featured/side-effect-of-plastic-aggressive-kids/

http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/40647

GM awarded DOE money to research Shape Memory Alloy heat engines

by Chris Shunk

General Motors has been awarded $2.7 million by the Department of Energy to create a working prototype engine using Shape Memory Alloys (SMA). The idea is for the prototype to use SMA tech to capture heat energy from engine exhaust gasses via an electric generator and transfer that energy to recharge batteries for hybrids or electric vehicles.

SMA tech can also theoretically power electronic devices like power seats and windows in a standard gas- or diesel-powered car, perhaps even replacing the power-sapping alternator. The GM press release, which is pasted after the jump, doesn’t go into much depth explaining how memory alloys work, but the basic principle is easy to understand.

“When you heat up a stretched SMA wire, it shrinks back to its pre-stretched length, and when it cools back down it becomes less stiff and can revert to the original shape” said Jan Aase, director of GM’s Vehicle Development Research Laboratory. “A loop of this wire could be used to drive an electric generator to charge a battery.”

While $2.7 million isn’t a lot of coin in the realm of GM finances (the General seemed to shed about $2.7 million every ten minutes pre-bankruptcy) the grant was significant in that it was the only monies awarded by the DoE given to an automaker. GM is working with partners from outside the auto industry to make the concept a reality, a practice that the General says is imperative to get breakthroughs like this to market. No timetable was given as to when GM’s SMA concept would see the light of day.

[Source: GM]

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/11/02/gm-awarded-doe-money-to-research-shape-memory-alloy-heat-engines/

Wrapping Solar Cells around an Optical Fiber

Solar on fiber: An optical fiber (left) is covered in dye-coated zinc-oxide nanowires (closeup, right). Both images were made using a scanning electron microscope.   Credit: Angewandte Chemie

Dye-sensitized cells get a double boost from nanowires and optical fiber.

By Katherine Bourzac

Dye-sensitized solar cells are flexible and cheap to make, but they tend to be inefficient at converting light into electricity. One way to boost the performance of any solar cell is to increase the surface area available to incoming light. So a group of researchers at Georgia Tech has made dye-sensitized solar cells with a much higher effective surface area by wrapping the cells around optical fibers. These fiber solar cells are six times more efficient than a zinc oxide solar cell with the same surface area, and if they can be built using cheap polymer fibers, they shouldn’t be significantly more expensive to make.

The advantage of a fiber-optic solar-cell system over a planar one is that light bounces around inside an optical fiber as it travels along its length, providing more opportunities to interact with the solar cell on its inner surface and producing more current. “For a given real estate, the total area of the cell is higher, and increased surface area means improved light harvesting and more energy,” says Max Shtein, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan who was not involved with the research.

Fiber-optic solar cells could also be used in ways that aren’t possible currently. Zhong Lin Wang, professor of materials science and engineering at Georgia Tech, says fiber solar cells would take up less roof area than planar cells because long lengths of the fibers could be nestled into the walls of a house like electrical wiring.

Dye-sensitized solar cells use dye molecules to absorb light and generate electrons. The Georgia Tech group first removes the cladding from optical fibers and then grows zinc-oxide nanowires along their surface, like bristles on a pipe cleaner. Next, the fibers are treated with dye molecules, which the zinc-oxide structures absorb. The advantage of coating nanowires, rather than a smooth surface, with the dye is that the wires collectively have a very large surface area. The more dye molecules there are over a given area of such a cell, the more light it can absorb, says Wang. The dye-coated fibers are then surrounded by an electrolyte and a metal film that carries electrons off the device. The work is described online in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Article Continues - http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23829/

Commercial Development of Magnetically Loaded Composite Flywheel

Williams F1 Establishes Technical Center in Qatar; Initial Focus on Commercial Development of Magnetically Loaded Composite Flywheel

Williams F1 and the Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) formally signed an agreement to inaugurate the Williams Technology Center (WTC). QSTP is a world-class incubator for the research, development and commercialization of new technologies that has attracted significant R&D investment from companies such as Shell, Microsoft and GE.

The Williams Technology Center at QSTP will be the first Formula One-related Technical Center outside the sport’s traditional heartland of Europe. The WTC will initially be tasked with the progression of two Formula One inspired R&D projects with clear commercial goals. The first is the development of an industrial-application large Magnetically Loaded Composite (MLC) flywheel—essentially a wholly composite flywheel which integrates the magnets of the electric motor into the composite.

<!––>The second is the advancement of Williams F1’s simulator know-how for competition and road car application.

MLC flywheel. The MLC flywheel project will address the potential of flywheels to store and release energy very quickly, which makes the technology suitable for a variety of applications. Initial target markets are mass transit systems (both for recycling the kinetic energy of trains and trams and to allow discontinuous electrification to reduce infrastructure costs) and electric power stabilization for renewable energy applications.

Williams Hybrid Power (WHP, formerly Automotive Hybrid Power Limited prior to acquisition in 2008 of a significant shareholding by Williams F1) is developing a version of its flywheel system for use as the energy storage element of Williams F1’s Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS).

WHP has taken the electrically-powered integral motor flywheel design—itself an improvement from earlier mechanical flywheel systems with a continuously variable transmission to transfer power to and from the flywheel—and radically improved its performance characteristics by incorporating Magnetically Loaded Composite (MLC) technology.

The MLC technology, developed in the nuclear industry by Urenco, incorporates the permanent magnets of the integral motor/generator into the composite structure of the flywheel itself by mixing magnetic powder into the resin matrix. This enables a flywheel system that can be made significantly smaller and lighter than conventional flywheels.

In the event of a burst failure, the containment has to withstand only the crushing force of the composite material, which is far less than the load of discrete metallic fragments. The reduced containment requirement minimizes the overall weight of the system.

According to WHP, the magnetic particles in the composite are magnetized as a Halbach Array after the rotor is manufactured avoiding the need for backing iron to direct the flux. As the magnets in an MLC flywheel are comprised of tiny particles and there is no additional metal in the structure, the eddy current losses of the machine are significantly reduced.

This can result in one-way efficiencies of up to 99%. The ultra-high efficiency means thermal management of the system is easier and it can be continuously cycled with no detriment to performance or reduction in life.

The 2009 FIA regulations allow a KERS fitted to a Formula One car to collect and store energy during braking at a maximum rate of 60 kW. Up to 400 kJ of this stored energy can then be re-introduced into the drivetrain each lap at a rate of up to 60 kW; an increase in overall power of about 10% for 7 seconds. Drivers have a boost button allowing them to deploy this extra energy tactically during a race, for instance in order to overtake.

As designed for F1, the WHP MLC flywheel-based KERS system offers:

• A cycle life of around 10 million charge discharge cycles—far greater than the few thousand of current chemical batteries.
• Continuous cycling with no detriment to performance or reduction in life.
• Specific power and power density superior to that of ultracapacitors and with significantly greater specific energy and energy density. Specific power = 3.0 kW/kg. Specific energy = 32.5 kJ/kg.

MLC Flywheel Evaluation for Transportation by University of Texas. Earlier in October, The Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE), an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization, awarded the Southern Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Coalition (SHFCC) Flywheel Demonstration Seed Project Grant to the University of Texas – Center for Electromechanics (UT-CEM).

Their proposal, “Assessment of Flywheel Technology Emerging from the Formula One Racing Community and its Benefits to the US Transit Bus Market,” seeks to evaluate the performance and cost benefits of WHP’s MLC flywheel technology for heavy-duty vehicles in the US market.

The program objective is to determine if this new flywheel energy storage technology provides next-generation fuel cell transit buses with either improved performance or reduced operational cost, or both. The $25K collaboration between UT-CEM and WHP will consist of a 6-month project period.

Simulation. Based on the extensive experience of proprietary driver-in-the-loop (DIL) simulator development for Formula One, the second aspect to the WTC program will be the development of new driver simulation technology for road car training, safety and entertainment, as well as competition simulators for other motorsport series.

The Williams Technology Center is anticipated to employ 20 staff with a double digit million dollar R&D budget, funded by QSTP and Williams F1, and a projected revenue stream that will reward both Williams F1 and QSTP for their investment and support future project ambitions.

To celebrate the announcement, the Qatar Science & Technology Park identity will form a prominent element of the team’s on-car race livery for this weekend’s inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

QSTP is part of the Qatar Foundation which also incorporates Education City, which hosts overseas campuses for six US universities including Carnegie Mellon and Texas A&M.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/10/whp-2009029.html