New technology now introduces solar boats

>>> FUTURE CAR TECHNOLOGY


It is interesting to see how much the car industry is starting to catch up to industries such as avaition and automation in recent years. One could actually be forgiven for being of the opinion that car manufacturers have not really been on the forefrunt of technological innovation as pehaps the aviation industry has been. But the tide does seem to be turning with many car manufacturers now starting to incorporate innovative safety features and designs into their fleets - even though most of these are still only available in the luxury flagship models. But one cannot help but wonder: where will technology ultimately lead the car manufacturing industry? Are we moving towards a car of the future that would be able to automatically take us to our destination by simply providing the location of where we want to go, or will the car still be a tool - an interactive tool - in human hands. Well, the possibilites do not seem to be set in stone. It is one of those rare cases where people have conflicting idealogies when it comes to moving from point A to point B. Some of us would like to maintain a sense of control while driving - sort of using it as a tool to enjoy freedom and the ability to move around at will. Some would prefer to just have a driver taking them to their desired destinationHowever, regardless of the method used to get from point A to point B, most people are in agreement that car and driving safety is an area that can be vastly improved upon. Alot of research is now being done on how to make the whole driving experience a safer one. Some of these methodes include automated devices that may be able to detect dangerous situations and then anticipate or even apply a suitabe course of action to avoid a collision. We have seen the developemnt of these drive aids such as ABS, ESC etc, but really, compared to the research that is now being done, this was all still in the infancy stages of development. Some car manufacturers are now even researching the possibility of cars monitoring the driver, mood, his or her abilty to react etc. Innovations such as these may very well be used to alert a driver when it senses the driver falling asleep or losing concentration. The possibilites seem endless when one considers the level of technology available today. These technologies also become more likely, as devices get smaller and smaller, allowing it to be seamlessly integraed into vehicles, as space is no longer such a big obstacle. Either way, when one considers the advances in technology today, we have to agree that technology will most certainly play an incredibly strong role in car manufacturing in future.

>>> SOLAR ENERGY THAT FLOATS ON WATER


Harnessing the sun's energy through solar power has had some drawbacks in the past, but a company called Sunengy Pty Ltd has now come up with a new concept for harnessing the sun's energy.Until now, generating solar energy has been very costly to implement, and although it is a fantastic alternative to conventional energy generating methods, it has largely remained outside as an alternative within the energy industry.That however, may all be changing soon...The company has devised a fresh approach to capturing the sun's energy by creating a solar panel able to float in the water. In fact, it uses the water to dispel some of the heat generated. The liquid solar array power generator, or LSA, is made mostly from plastic, and as mentioned, it floats on water.The panel only has a small area made up of photovoltaic cells, but a larger rotating plastic focusing lens above the area, both tracks and focusses the sun's rays throughout the day. The water is used to cool the silicon cells.The lens is also able to submerge when fully rotated, which can then offer some protection during high winds and storms. The lens is robust enough to survive winds of more than 100mph, using the water as protection, despite being only 2mm thick. In addition, the water is also used to clean the lens when dipped under the water.Now to get to the cost of implementation: The LSA technology has the potential to match the cost of producing fossil fuel. According to the company, the LSA is able to cut the cost of raw solar electricity from USD$5/W to USD$1.30/W in the short term, and in the long term to below USD$0.60/W under the correct conditions. This figure relates to about USD$0.03/kWhr.Part of what makes this an efficient system is because the LSA system tracks the sun with high efficiency cells, thus generating more uniform power throughout the day than the conventional flat PV systems. The company has produced a working model as well as a 3D computer design of the model, and they believe commercial sales may be a viable within one to three years.

NEW RADIATION THERAPY PROMISES RELIEF FOR OVERHEATING LAPTOPS
BY: KURT PFITZER, LEHIGH UNIVERSITY.
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Our modern age has become accustomed to regular improvements in information technology, says Slava Rotkin, but these advances do not come without a cost.Take the laptop, for example. Its components, especially its billions of semiconductor electronic circuits, are growing ever tinier while the instrument’s power and capacity increase. But heat generated by electric current can cause the circuits to melt and the laptop hardware to fail.Indeed, says Rotkin, an assistant professor of physics, a laptop in use can generate heat faster than an everyday hotplate and almost as fast as a small nuclear reactor. Developing better methods to dissipate this heat has been listed as a "grand challenge" for modern electronics by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, a consortium of semiconductor manufacturers. Rotkin and his colleagues at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center and at the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, have developed a heat-dissipation method that cools carbon nanotube electronics by utilizing nonconventional radiation in a "near-field zone" just above the substrate, or surface, on which the nanotubes rest.The new cooling method requires that the nanotubes’ substrate be composed of a polar material such as silicon-dioxide (SiO2), says Rotkin. The method channels excess heat from the nanotubes into the substrate which, being much larger, can be more effectively cooled by the vents that push cool air through laptops."Other methods of heat dissipation do not succeed at discharging heat from within the channel of the nanotube or nanowire," says Rotkin. "Our method enables the heat to leave the channel and move to the substrate, while also scattering the hot electrons. This constitutes a novel cooling mechanism without any moving parts or cooling agents."Rotkin and his colleagues described the results of their research in an article published last week in Nano Letters, one of the premier international journals in the field of nanotechnology.The article, titled "An Essential Mechanism of Heat Dissipation in Carbon Nanotube Electronics", was co-authored by Rotkin, who is a primary faculty member with Lehigh’s Center for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology; Vasilii Perebeinos and Phaedon Avouris of IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center; and Alexey G. Petrov of the Ioffe Institute.Rotkin and his colleagues have been studying the heat-dissipation problems associated with carbon nanotube electronics for three years. Their current article is the fifth article co-authored by Rotkin that Nano Letters has published in the past year.Because the nanotubes and substrate are made of heterogeneous materials, says Rotkin, their rate of thermal coupling, or heat release, is relatively low, similar to that of dry wood. This makes it difficult to dissipate heat from the nanotubes to the substrate through classical thermal conduction.Rotkin and his colleagues instead utilize what they call surface phonon-polariton (SPP) thermal coupling by exploiting the high level of electron scattering that occurs in non-suspended carbon nanotube transistors. A wave called a surface polariton is caused by this electron scattering, says Rotkin. This polariton is particularly strong in the near field zone just above the substrate on which the carbon nanotubes rest."If you put a graphene monolayer, or layer of carbon nanotubes, in a near field zone," says Rotkin, "this enables the hot electrons to be scattered by the surface polariton and to give out energy to the substrate. Heat is dissipated into the substrate as radiation tunnels from the nanotube through the near field zone to the substrate."If you move the nanotube away from the substrate, the near field tunneling ceases and the mechanism is absent. "We achieve all of our coupling through surface polariton scattering because of a large enhancement of the electrical field of the polariton in the near field zone. "Most semiconductor devices fabricated now have the nanotube or nanowire placed directly on a silica substrate, which is polar. With this mechanism, if the substrate is polar and if there’s a small van der Waals gap, our new near-field channel totally dominates thermal coupling."A change advocated by ITRS—from a silica substrate to one made of dielectric materials with a higher dielectric constant—would give the substrate material an even stronger surface polariton, says Rotkin. Rotkin’s group used microscopic quantum models to calculate heat dissipation as a function of electric field, doping and temperature. "Most of the energy losses are dissipated directly into the polar substrate and do not contribute to the field-effect transistor temperature rise," the group wrote in the most recent Nano Letters article.We have shown that SPP thermal coupling increases the effective thermal conductance over the interface between nanotube and [polar substrate] by an order of magnitude." Rotkin will summarize his research in an invited talk titled "Thermal Moore’s law and near-field thermal conductance in carbon-based electronics" to be presented in August at SPIE’s Optics + Photonics conference in San Diego, Calif. SPIE is an international organization devoted to light-based research. Article Courtesy of: Kurt Pfitzer,

Lehigh University