news digest ♦ Novel Devices
MicroPower Global is a private company which is developing the next generation of thermoelectric devices for use in the areas of energy conservation, energy harvesting and refrigeration. The new MicroPower semiconductors chips can efficiently and cost-effectively convert heat, including waste heat, directly into electricity, leading to significant energy savings in a number of industrial and consumer applications.
The ability to harvest heat at temperatures ranging from 200°C to 600°C will make MicroPower chips the new thermoelectric standard for waste heat recovery. The current thermoelectric market is relatively small at approximately $300 million annually but MicroPower will be able to open up already identified new global markets worth many billions annually. Its technology has been patented internationally and independently verified.
Texas State University’s STAR Park Picodeon’s diamond-like
coatings shine The company’s US PLD technology delivers improved reliability in applications where through-thickness defects may cause delamination of thin films and serious damage to components
Finnish coating technology specialist Picodeon has developed a technique for depositing diamond-like films onto a wide range of substrates using its patented ultra-short pulsed laser deposition (US PLD) technology.
This technology can be used in the manufacturing of compound semiconductor devices.
Diamond-like coatings create superhard surfaces (greater than 40 Gpa) with a low coefficient of friction and excellent coating adhesion.
The Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) Park is a 38 acre site which hosts Texas State’s first building, STAR One, dedicated to the university’s research and commercialisation efforts. STAR One, a 20,000-square-foot facility, serves as a technology accelerator for start-up and early-stage businesses, and provides tenants access to secure wet labs, clean space, conference room, and office space.
The Incubator Program is designed to foster the development of new commercial ventures related to Texas State technologies in applied research. This building houses ‘spin-offs’ from research conducted and intellectual property generated by university faculty, and ‘spin-ins’ from companies that want to strategically work with the university.
The overall goal of the Incubator Program is to provide space and infrastructure to expedite research and commercial development of promising technologies in the context of viable, well managed, start-up companies.
By bringing together a critical mass of university and private sector specialists, the Incubator Program becomes a magnet for scientific expertise, novel problem solving, and successful commercial ventures.
The Incubator Program is particularly interested in supporting companies which have established research relationships with Texas State, or which have an interest in, and potential for, initiating such relationships.
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www.compoundsemiconductor.net August/September 2013
Picodeon’s cutting tool coating
The US PLD deposition process uses a high laser pulse repetition rate and fan-shaped plasma bloom which enables high production rates and makes feasible the industrial coating of large surfaces at film thicknesses down to the nanoscale.
Applications for diamond-like coatings range from machine tooling components through to wear components for medical, optical and sensor applications.
“Any components that need to have the highest possible hardness or wear-resistance can achieve improved lifecycles, greater heat and pressure resistance and/or improved performance with diamond-like coatings,” says Picodeon CEO Marko Mylläri. “Our US PLD deposition process can deliver the exact surface defined by our customers’ engineers because of the high level of tuning enabled by our process.”
Picodeon’s US PLD deposition is a cold ablation technology which works across a vast range of coating materials and substrates. By adjusting processing parameters, the structure and properties of the coating can be tailored to the requirements of the application, even for nanostructure-scale surface coatings.
The US PLD technology delivers very high coating integrity
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