The following is a roundup of news and notable developments in electrical engineering and computer or information technology during November 2008. Items are excerpted from news releases generated by research universities and government agencies. Highlighted topics include:

1. New Solar Panel Coating Allows “Near Perfect” Absorption From All Angles

2. DOE's Oak Ridge Supercomputer World's Fastest For Open Science

3. K-State Lab Focuses on Ultrafast Laser Research

4. New Method Proposed for Measuring LED Illumination

5. Virtual Reality Therapy for Stroke Patients

6. A Card-Swipe for Medical Tests

7. Nanoscale Generator Produces Alternating Current

8. Survey Measures Public Support for Health-Related Nanotechnology

9. Research Findings Suggest Nanowires Ideal for Electronics Manufacturing

10. Magnetic Properties of Semiconductor Materials Offer Data Storage Potential

11. Researchers Make “Twistable” Electronics

12. New Theory Proposed for Superconductivity

13. Electron Pairs Precede High-Temperature Superconductivity

14. New Nanocluster to Boost Thin Films for Semiconductors

15. Study to Explore Self-Efficacy and Retention of Women Engineering Undergrads

16. DOE Funds Research to Better Detect Covert Nuclear Tests

1. New Solar Panel Coating Allows “Near Perfect” Absorption From All Angles

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle. There work has moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power.

“To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky,” said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university’s Future Chips Constellation, who led the research project. “Our new antireflective coating makes this possible.”

An untreated silicon solar cell only absorbs 67.4 percent of sunlight shone upon it — meaning that nearly one-third of that sunlight is reflected away and thus unharvestable. From an economic and efficiency perspective, this unharvested light is wasted potential and a major barrier hampering the proliferation and widespread adoption of solar power.

After a silicon surface was treated with Lin’s new nanoengineered reflective coating, however, the material absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight shone upon it — meaning that only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested. This huge gain in absorption was consistent across the entire spectrum of sunlight, from UV to visible light and infrared, and moves solar power a significant step forward toward economic viability. Lin’s new coating also successfully tackles the tricky challenge of angles.

For more information, see: http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2507

2. DOE's Oak Ridge Supercomputer World's Fastest For Open Science

The latest upgrade to the Jaguar supercomputer at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has increased the system's computing power to a peak 1.64 "petaflops," or quadrillion mathematical calculations per second, making Jaguar the world's first petaflop system dedicated to open research. The new petaflop machine will make it possible to address some of the most challenging scientific problems in areas such as climate modeling, renewable energy, materials science, fusion and combustion.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/ddoe-dor111008.php

3. K-State Lab Focuses on Ultrafast Laser Research

The J.R. Macdonald Laboratory at Kansas State University has shifted its research focus to ultrafast laser science. This change in emphasis could lead to innovations benefiting medicine, energy and other technologies.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/ksu-kpl102808.php

4. New Method Proposed for Measuring LED Illumination

The lack of common measurement methods among light-emitting diode (LED) and lighting manufacturers has affected the commercialization of solid-state lighting products. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have proposed a new, economical method to allow LED and lighting manufacturers to obtain accurate, reproducible, and comparable measurements of LED brightness and color.

The quality of the light that high-power LEDs produce depends on their operating temperature. To speed production, LED manufacturers typically use a high-speed pulsed test to measure the color and brightness of their products. However, because pulsed measurements do not give the LED chip time to warm to its normal operating temperature, the measured light output quality is not the same as would be realized in actual lighting products.

The lighting industry uses a steady-state DC measurement approach similar to that used for traditional incandescents and fluorescents. This method involves turning the light on, letting it warm up, and measuring the characteristics of the light produced. Although time-consuming, DC measurement provides a more realistic test of how the lighting product will perform in a consumer’s living room. The problem was that researchers did not understand how the DC measurement results correlated with the pulse measurement results that LED manufacturers use.

NIST scientists Yuqin Zong and Yoshi Ohno have created a standard high-power LED measurement method that satisfies the needs of both LED and lighting manufacturers. The NIST method leverages the fact that the optical and electrical characteristics of an LED are interrelated and a function of the LED’s junction temperature (the temperature of the semiconductor chip inside the LED, which is normally very difficult to measure).

For more information, see: www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_1125.htm#led

5. Virtual Reality Therapy for Stroke Patients

Researchers in UCF's Media Convergence Lab (MCL) are teaming up with the California-based Virtual Reality Medical Center (VRMC) to create the program and software that can track patients' progress. VRMC obtained a contract last year from the National Science Foundation to develop the virtual program, and the company teamed up with the UCF researchers for preliminary work. The research team since has landed a $199,000 contract to create a fully functional virtual game.

Although the game could change slightly, the design will require patients to put on goggles while sitting at a table. A few bugs would fly around nearby. The patients' mission is to smash all of the virtual insects. Each time they succeed, they would earn a point. As patients improve their range of motion, more bugs would appear at greater distances, forcing patients to work harder and increase their range of motion. Think of a 21st-century version of the childhood game "Whack-a-Mole."
"It has to be fun so patients will actually do their physical therapy exercises," said Eileen Smith, associate director of UCF's Media Convergence Lab at the Institute of Simulation and Training.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/uocf-sps111008.php

6. A Card-Swipe for Medical Tests

DARPA and NSF-funded University of Utah scientists successfully created a sensitive prototype device that could test for dozens or even hundreds of diseases simultaneously by acting like a credit card-swipe machine to scan a card loaded with microscopic blood, saliva or urine samples. The prototype works on the same principle — giant magnetoresistance or GMR — that is used to read data on computer hard drives or listen to tunes on portable digital music players.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/uou-acf102908.php

7. Nanoscale Generator Produces Alternating Current

Researchers have developed a new type of small-scale electric power generator able to produce alternating current through the cyclical stretching and releasing of zinc oxide wires encapsulated in a flexible plastic substrate with two ends bonded.

The new "flexible charge pump" generator is the fourth generation of devices designed to produce electrical current by using the piezoelectric properties of zinc oxide structures to harvest mechanical energy from the environment. "The flexible charge pump offers yet another option for converting mechanical energy into electrical energy," said Zhong Lin Wang, Regent's professor and director of the Center for Nanostructure Characterization at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "This adds to our family of very small-scale generators able to power devices used in medical sensing, environmental monitoring, defense technology and personal electronics."

The new generator can produce an oscillating output voltage of up to 45 millivolts, converting nearly seven percent of the mechanical energy applied directly to the zinc oxide wires into electricity. The research has been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Emory-Georgia Tech Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/giot-nsg110508.php

8. Survey Measures Public Support for Health-Related Nanotechnology

A landmark national survey on the use of nanotechnology for "human enhancement" shows widespread public support for applications of the new technology related to improving human health. However, the survey also shows broad disapproval for use of nanotech for human enhancement in areas without health benefits. A team of researchers at North Carolina State University and Arizona State University (ASU) conducted the study, which could influence the direction of future nanotechnology research efforts.

The "Public Awareness of Nanotechnology Study" is the first nationally representative survey to examine public opinion on the use of nanotechnology for human enhancement. The survey found significant support for enhancements that promise to improve human health. For example, 88 percent of participants were in favor of research for a video-to-brain link that would amount to artificial eyesight for the blind. However, there was little support for non-health research endeavors. For example, only 30 percent of participants approved of research into implants that could improve performance of soldiers on the battlefield.
While the survey shows strong public support for research into nanotechnology applications in the health field, those findings are tempered by a similar concern from the public about the scope of that research. The study found that 55 percent of participants felt that researchers should "avoid playing God with new technologies." Similarly, the public expressed little confidence in the government and mass media to inform people about potential risks from new technologies. Rather, participants said they had the greatest confidence in university scientists and environmental groups to protect the public.
For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/ncsu-shs111308.php

9. Research Findings Suggest Nanowires Ideal for Electronics Manufacturing

Researchers from IBM and Purdue University have discovered that tiny structures called silicon nanowires might be ideal for manufacturing in future computers and consumer electronics because they form the same way every time. The researchers used an instrument called a transmission electron microscope to watch how nanowires made of silicon "nucleate," or begin to form, before growing into wires, said Eric Stach, an assistant professor of materials engineering at Purdue University.

The work is based at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and at Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center in the university's Discovery Park. The research is funded by the National Science Foundation through the NSF's Electronic and Photonic Materials Program in the Division of Materials Research.

"What's unusual about this work is that we are looking at these things on an extremely small scale," Stach said. "The three major findings are that you can see that the nucleation process on this small scale is highly repeatable, that you can measure and predict when it's going to occur, and that those two facts together give you a sense that you could confidently design systems to manufacture these nanowires for electronics."

It was the first time researchers had made such precise measurements of the nucleation process in nanowires, he said.

For more information, see: http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2008b/081113StachNanowires.html

10. Magnetic Properties of Semiconductor Materials Offer Data Storage Potential

Researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated for the first time the existence of a key magnetic — as opposed to electronic — property of specially built semiconductor devices. This discovery raises hopes for even smaller and faster gadgets that could result from magnetic data storage in a semiconductor material, which could then quickly process the data through built-in logic circuits controlled by electric fields.

Magnetic data storage is currently utilized with great success in consumer products such as computer hard drives and MP3 players. But these storage devices are based on metallic materials. These conventional hard drives can only hold data; they have to send the data to a semiconductor-based device to process the data, slowing down performance.

Researchers from NIST, Korea University and the University of Notre Dame have confirmed theorists’ hopes that thin magnetic layers of semiconductor material could exhibit a prized property known as antiferromagnetic coupling—in which one layer spontaneously aligns its magnetic pole in the opposite direction as the next magnetic layer. The discovery of antiferromagnetic coupling in metals was the basis of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics, but it is only recently that it has become conceivable for semiconductor materials. Semiconductors with magnetic properties would not only be able to process data, but also store it.

For more information, see: www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_1125.htm#magnetic

11. Researchers Make “Twistable” Electronics

Yonggang Huang, Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and John Rogers, the Flory-Founder Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have improved their so-called "pop-up" technology to create circuits that can be twisted. Such electronics could be used in places where flat, unbending electronics would fail, like on the human body. Their research is published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Electronic components historically have been flat and unbendable because silicon, the principal component of all electronics, is brittle and inflexible. Any significant bending or stretching renders an electronic device useless. Huang and Rogers developed a method to fabricate stretchable electronics that increases the stretching range (as much as 140 percent) and allows the user to subject circuits to extreme twisting. This emerging technology promises new flexible sensors, transmitters, new photovoltaic and microfluidic devices, and other applications for medical and athletic use.

"For a lot of applications related to the human body — like placing a sensor on the body — an electronic device needs not only to bend and stretch but also to twist," said Huang. "So we improved our pop-up technology to accommodate this. Now it can accommodate any deformation."

Huang and Rogers now are focusing their research on another important application of this technology: solar panels. The pair published a cover article in Nature Materials this month describing a new process of creating very thin silicon solar cells that can be combined in flexible and transparent arrays.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/nu-rmn111908.php

12. New Theory Proposed For Superconductivity

Los Alamos Laboratory researchers Tuson Park and Joe D. Thompson have posited an explanation for superconductivity that may open the door to the discovery of new, unconventional forms of superconductivity.

Traditional theories of superconductivity hold that electrons within certain nonmagnetic materials can pair up when jostled together by atomic vibrations known as phonons. In other words, phonons provide the “glue” that makes superconductivity possible.

Park and his colleagues now describe a different type of “glue” giving rise to superconducting behavior. Park and his colleagues cooled a compound of Cerium, Rhodium and Indium to just above absolute zero, nearly minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature, the material exhibits superconducting behavior. However, they also subjected the crystal to pressure changes and a magnetic field to perturb the alignment of electrons within the material. This electronic traffic jam would discourage electron pairing by phonons; nevertheless, the material continued to exhibit superconducting behavior.

Park and his colleagues believe that this quantum critical point provides a mechanism to pair electrons into a quantum state that gives rise to superconducting behavior. In other words, the research helps explain a mechanism for superconductivity without phonons.

A new mechanism for the electron-pairing glue that gives rise to superconductivity could allow researchers to design new materials that exhibit superconducting materials at higher temperatures, perhaps even opening the door to the “Holy Grail” of superconducting materials—one that works at room temperature.

For more information, see: www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/15126

13. Electron Pairs Precede High-Temperature Superconductivity

Physicists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have found ways to sharpen images of the energy spectra in high-temperature superconductors — materials that carry electrical current effortlessly when cooled below a certain temperature. These new imaging methods confirm that the electron pairs needed to carry current emerge above the transition temperature, before superconductivity sets in.

For more information see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/dnl-epp110308.php

14. New Nanocluster to Boost Thin Films for Semiconductors

Oregon researchers funded by NSF and the U.S. Army have synthesized an elusive metal-hydroxide compound in sufficient and rapidly produced yields, potentially paving the way for improved precursor inks that could boost semiconductor capabilities for large-area applications.

The results represent a significant breakthrough in the way liquids are produced for semiconductor fabrication, said co-author Douglas A. Keszler, distinguished professor of chemistry at Oregon State and adjunct UO chemistry professor. "We now have new methods for pushing printed inorganic electronics to higher levels of performance within a useful class of materials."

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/uoo-nnt103108.php

15. Study to Explore Self-Efficacy and Retention of Women Engineering Undergrads

Virginia Tech is the co-recipient of a $499,990 three-year National Science Foundation grant to study how cooperative education and related on-the-job experiences affect female undergraduate engineering students. Currently, women are underrepresented in engineering. They make up only 18.6 percent of engineering bachelor degree recipients and, in 2006, held only 11 percent of engineering positions.

The research team will investigate the hypothesis that women in formal engineering programs who participate in work related to their field of study during their undergraduate education have higher self-efficacy and are more likely to graduate with a degree in their chosen field. Rachelle Reisberg, director of Women in Engineering at Northeastern University is principal investigator and Carol J. Burger, associate professor of interdisciplinary studies at Virginia Tech, is a co-principle investigator. Working with Reisberg and Burger are colleagues from the Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Wyoming.

The study, Pathways to Work Self-Efficacy and Retention of Women in Undergraduate Engineering, is one of the first to investigate how co-op opportunities and other formal work experience programs impact the retention rate of female undergraduate engineering students. In addition, the study will examine programs, such as mentoring, advising, and academic living communities, to see how they contribute to self-efficacy and retention.

For more information see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/vt-gat111108.php

16. DOE Funds Research to Better Detect Covert Nuclear Tests

As part of a broad international effort to eliminate the testing of nuclear weapons, engineers at The University of Texas at Austin were awarded $511,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration to research better methods for monitoring and detecting covert nuclear tests.

Associate Professor Steven Biegalski and Assistant Professor Mark Deinert, both of the Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program, will work on how atmospheric xenon can be used to determine whether a country has conducted a nuclear test. Nuclear tests, they say, are typically tested below ground to keep the radioactive products out of the biosphere and to conceal tests from regulatory agencies.

For more information, see: www.utexas.edu/news/2008/11/03/nuclear_activity

E-mail this page to a friend Tell us what you thought of this article