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If it's Wednesday, it must be Phoenix, or Sheboygan: Midweek musings from the Chip Shots roadshow |
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Apr 23, 2008 at 11:22 PM |
The Chip Shots one-man show is taking it on the road this week, first to Sheboygan, WI, to visit the SAFC Hitech plant and now in Phoenix, for a solar-heavy schedule of facility tours in the sunburned McCainiac state of Arizona.
I'll report on my SAFC visit next week, but in the meantime, a few midweek musings.
A is for ASMC. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the IEEE/SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC) ranks as one of the best technical symposia focused on chipmaking best practices. This year's edition (the 19th iteration) takes place week after next, May 5-7, in Cambridge, MA, over the river from Beantown. I must admit to some shameless self-promotion this time though, since I will be moderating a panel on the afternoon of May 6, which will feature panelists from the solar/PV and flex/printed/organic electronics, who will speak to how those industries offer some paradigm-tweaking and biz model-morphing opportunities for the semiconductor manufacturing value chain--or not.
But the meat and potatoes of the conference will be the combo of compelling keynotes, 15 tech sessions, and 20-odd poster papers. If you work in a fab, supply a fab with tools, materials or services, or research fab processes and production practices, attending the ASMC would be well worth the time/money/effort. Frankly, if you're in the eastern US, you have no excuse for not attending! Catch phrases garnered from this year's program include "manufacturing efficiency," "maverick yield" and "matrix factorisation" events, spintronics, predictive modeling, "design for maintenance," "virtual metrology," "corona charge photoconductance decay," and "pitch decomposition." What's not to intrigue?
It rhymes with "polymer." I recently became aware of another photovoltaic startup, one based in El Monte, not far from my digs in Los Angeles. Dina Lozofsky, who I met when she worked at UCLA with the California NanoSystems Institute, recently took the VP of IP development and strategic alliances position at Solarmer Energy. As she told me in a recent email, the PV newbie (with UCLA-developed basic tech) "is working to make flexible, translucent, efficient polymer solar cells a reality, and we have just achieved the first demonstration of our technology. As far as we know," she continued, "this is the first polymer solar cell charging of a mobile phone (see photo below). The panel was successfully tested out charging multiple brands of phones."
Solarmer's plastic PV demo charges things up.
She went on to tell me that they "are very excited about this demonstration," and "are looking to the future of the technology. Our goal is to demonstrate a commercial-grade version of the prototype by the end of the third quarter of 2009. That prototype should provide 8% efficiency with 3+ years lifetime. When we achieve this efficiency goal, the charger we just demonstrated will be reduced to about the size of a medium post-it note."
In a follow-up email, she said the active film layers on the devices were about 200 nm, and are solution processed, currently with spincoating, but later it will be done with a blading and printing approach. Although using a batch process at this stage, Solarmer plans to employ roll-to-roll manufacturing when they push toward pilot and volume production. She added that in terms of the timing of said pilot line and full production, "we are working on addressing those issues in the next six months." As for the first major app envisioned by Solarmer for its polymer PV, portable digital devices are the targeted niche.
Dina sent me a presentation delivered by the company's technology researcher, Vishal Shrotriya, at the Organic Photovoltaics conference in Philadelphia this week. But I'm going to hold off discussing any details of the paper for now. Why? Because Dina has invited me to come and visit Solarmer next month, so I hope to provide a full report on this upstart company's plastic fantastic organic PV breakthrough in the future.
Let us praise the pianist. Last time I was in Phoenix, I discovered a phenomenal young piano player at the My Florist cafe in the Willows area of town. Her name is Nicole Pesce, and she has been called the "human iPod" for her vast trove of memorized songs that, once requested, she can summon with a tinkle of the ivories and a twinkle in her smiling eyes. But it is her improvisational creativity with those 10,000+ tunes that is truly mind-blowing, drawing slack-jawed, wide-eyed classical and jazz musicians (and regular folks) to her weekly series of shows. On the weekends, I'm told she draws a packed house.
Earlier this evening, I stopped by the restaurant for some malbec, pear salad, and Nicole. Flowing from her constantly moving fingers came a torrent of interpretations including the Beatles, Gershwin, Stevie Wonder, Santana, Duke Ellington, Bill Withers, and--by my request--Thelonious Monk and Radiohead. My original take on her talent was confirmed: she is not just another "piano bar" lounge lizard draped over the keyboard, but a true artist and force of nature with marvelous technique.
If you appreciate musical genius and live in the Phoenix area or are visiting Intel, Freescale, ON Semi, ASU or one of the myriad suppliers in the valley of the freakin' relentless sun, I strongly suggest you grab a bite and a few drinks at My Florist and check out Ms. Pesce's phenomenal pianistics.
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