NECINA Optics Special Interest Group (SIG) Seminar

Time:           2:00pm to 5:00pm, Saturday, January 12, 2008

Location:     Finisar Corporation (formerly Azna LLC), 36 Jonspin Road, Wilmington, MA 01887

Topic:          New Energies

2:00pm-2:30pm  Networking Time

2:30pm-2:45pm  Introduction

2:45pm-3:45pm Advanced Support the Globe with Tiny Things: Sustainable Energy from Nanomaterials

Dr. Dunwei Wang, Boston College

Abstract: Continuous population increase and high living standards demand ever more energy. While it still remains a lively debate how long fossil fuels, the major energy source we currently rely on, will last, people have already come to conclusions that the negative environment effect caused by burning fossil fuels is unacceptable. It thus becomes urgent to develop new technologies that can produce energy comparable to that based on fossil fuels, not only in magnitude but also in price. For long-term prosperity, renewable energy is apparently desired. Solar energy, therefore, stands out for obvious reasons. The development of solar energy conversion devices such as photovoltaic cells, however, is rather slow, albeit an old technology, mainly because of the combined high cost and low efficiency. Notwithstanding detailed difference, most energy related processes including charge separation, transport and recombination, are of characteristic distance of nanometer scale. So, emerging nanomaterials with relevant length hold great promises in meeting the daunting energy challenge. I’ll summarize recent development of energy related research using nanomaterials and present our efforts within this context. I’ll share with you our thoughts on how semiconductor nanowires may offer advantages in both high efficiency and low cost. Our recent results will be discussed as well.

Dr. Dunwei Wang is originally from Jiangsu Province, China. He moved to California in 2000 to pursue his doctoral degree at Stanford University. After working as a postdoctoral scholar at California Institute of Technology for two years, he recently joined Boston College chemistry department as an assistant professor. Wang’s part research concerned Ge nanowires, a fast electronic material, and highly order arrays of Si nanowires as building blocks for logic gates. His present interest centers on nanomaterial-based energy processes and applications. Wang is the recipient of the IUPAC Prize for Young Chemist in 2006.

3:45pm-4:00pm  Break

4:00pm-5:00pm  Introduction to Fuel Cells

Dr. John Zhou, Lilliputian Systems

The ever-rising oil and gas prices and the demand for environmental friendly forms of power generation have led to a surge in the efforts in exploring and developing clean alternative energies. While solar, wind, and hydroelectric powers are among perhaps the most well known clean alternatives, fuel-cell technology is uniquely positioned to provide clean power for non-stationary applications such as motor vehicles. The recent advances in micro fuel cell technologies have offered the promise to eventually cut the cord off such devices as mobile phones and laptop computers. This talk is an introduction to fuel cells. The focus will be on micro fuel cells and technologies.

Dr. John Zhou has over 15 year experience in design, process development, and fabrication of optoelectronic and MEMS devices. He graduated from the Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, and received his MS from the Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ph.D in physical chemistry from University of Cambridge, UK. He is currently a senior process engineer at Lilliputian Systems, developing Si MEMS-based solid oxide micro fuel cells.

Contact: Yong Qiao (978) 201-1980, Frank Fan (978) 204-4980, Jin Li (978) 996-8058 

Organizers: Jin Li, Yong Qiao, Qingwu Wang, Xueyan Zheng, Frank Fan, and Yi Qian

For more information, please visit the following sites

NECINA Optics SIG : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NECINA_SIG_Optics/

NECINA: http://www.necina.org/