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Corning prepares to again produce missile nosecones

They called them Falcon, Hawk, Tartar, Sidewinder, Sparrow and Svenska. They were missiles that used one of Corning Inc.’s most successful defense products of the 1950s and 1960s: glass-ceramic radomes. The radomes, made of Corning’s proprietary Pyroceram materials, were nosecones that allowed missiles in flight to receive and transmit signals during difficult weather and extreme temperatures.

High reliability metal terminal capacitors from Murata achieve major acoustic noise reduction and are immune to PCB flexure

Murata has developed a series of multilayer ceramic capacitorss with a unique external metal terminal design, which reduces problems associated with mounting larger size MLCCs, including acoustic noise production and cracks caused by flexing the printed circuit boards.

Toyota and Tesla announce decision tobuild RAV4 electric vehicle at Toyota’s Woodstock, Ontario production facility

“The Tesla-Toyota joint development team has agreed that building the vehicle at the Woodstock plant on the same line as the gasoline-powered RAV4, will streamline and simplify the production process and guarantee the highest level of quality control,” said Ray Tanguay, TMMC Chairman, who hosted Canadian officials at the plant today and thanked them for their support. “This is a great example of Toyota’s determination to collaborate with companies with leading edge technology.”

Aspen Aerogels Inc. files registration statement for proposed initial public offering

Aspen Aerogels Inc., an energy efficiency company that designs, develops and manufactures innovative, high-performance aerogel insulation, announced today that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock. Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley & Co. will act as joint book-running managers for the offering. The number of shares to be sold in the proposed offering and the price range of the proposed offering have not yet been determined.

AeroVironment Inc. files patent application for aerogel-insulated cryogenic liquid tank

The tank has a wall made of layers of aerogel sections around a hard shell layer, sealed within a flexible outer layer, and having the air removed to form a vacuum. The periphery of each layer section abuts other sections of that layer, but only overlies the periphery of the sections of other layers at individual points. The wall is characterized by a thermal conductivity that is lower near its gravitational top than its gravitational bottom. The tank has two exit passageways, one being direct, and the other passing through a vapor shield that extends through the wall between two layers of aerogel.

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Here is what we are hearing:

Rubicon Technology Malaysian polishing facility earns key endorsements, begins volume production of large-diameter sapphire wafers

The company’s new Malaysia facility recently completed qualification of its six-inch wafers by a key customer, and also successfully completed an ISO certification audit. Both of these milestones enable the Malaysia facility to move into volume production of six-inch polished wafers, which are in high demand as LED chip manufacturers continue to migrate to larger diameter substrates to realize greater efficiencies. The facility also is capable of processing and polishing eight-inch wafers that Rubicon provides to customers in R&D volumes.

Aspen Aerogels Inc. files registration statement for proposed initial public offering

Aspen Aerogels Inc., an energy efficiency company that designs, develops and manufactures innovative, high-performance aerogel insulation, announced today that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock. Goldman, Sachs Co. and Morgan Stanley Co. LLC will act as joint book-running managers for the offering. The number of shares to be sold in the proposed offering and the price range of the proposed offering have not yet been determined.

MyGen US-made solar energy kits by Kyocera offer expanded domestically produced content

Kyocera Solar Inc. announced that MyGen US-made kits — domestically produced, all-inclusive kits for residential and light commercial solar energy installations — are available now. The MyGen solar energy kits are ideal for new entrants into the solar market and professionals in the electrical contractor industry interested in expanding into solar energy installations.

Schott to supply EPAs for world’s first commercial modular high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactor

Schott North America announced it will be the first company to supply all the required Electrical Penetration Assemblies, sealed with glass and metal, for a prototype nuclear reactor being built in China. The reactor is scheduled to go into operation in China in about four years time. These are currently the only EPAs in the world to be used in such advanced nuclear reactors.

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R50 vacuum insulation panel, 30×48x1 inch. Credit: ThermalVisions.

Nano R&D is opening up new energy-conservation vistas, but a new report from Lux Research claims that the adoption of existing nano-enabled products, such as aerogels, low-friction coatings and quantum dot LEDs, could yield a huge energy-consumption reduction in three countries representative of nations with developed economies: Japan, Germany and the United States.

How huge? Lux, which provides strategic advice and intelligence on emerging technologies, says that these nano products could cut energy consumption by 12%. No one is advocating this (settle down Ohio and West Virginia), but Lux says that is the equivalent of shutting down all of the coal-powered generation plants in the U.S.

Lux researcher and lead author of the report David Hwang says researchers examined energy usage in residential, commercial, industrial and transportation sectors, and then interviewed nanotech product developers, manufacturers and end users. Generally speaking, they discovered that the U.S. would benefit most from nano in the automobile sector, Germany from heating application for residential and commercial use and Japan from lighting applications. Here is how Lux summarized its observations:

• “The ubiquitous American automobile drives most energy consumption in the U.S. Hence, low-friction tribological coatings and lightweight nanocomposites offer the biggest opportunities — 1.8% and 3.6%, respectively — for reducing energy consumption. With 3.9% total energy spent on lighting in the commercial, industrial, and residential sectors, QD-enabled LED lighting could cut another 2.5% from the U.S.’s energy consumption in 2020.”

• “Germany’s energy consumption is dominated by space heating. In 2009, 28.9% of the country’s total consumption went to heating living and work spaces in the residential and commercial sectors. Consequently, nano-enabled insulation could help lower countrywide consumption by 6.8%, representing almost half of Germany’s total potential savings. Adoption of tribological coatings and nanocomposites in German automobiles could cut another 3.8% from the country’s total consumption by 2020.

• “In 2009, 4.6% of Japan’s energy was used for general space illumination. With the large efficiency increases that QD-enabled LEDs deliver, the country could shave off 3.3% of total consumption by 2020.”

Hwang says the reference to nano-enabled insulation includes things such as aerogels, vacuum insulated panels with aerogel and other foam cores, polyurethane foams and coated glasses, although he says that coated glass, thermochromic glass, etc., will play a bigger role in locales where cooling is more important than heating. He mentions that Cabot and Aspen are finding significant sales success in the European insulation market.

In addition, he notes predicts that ceramic materials can play a big role in energy savings in the automotive composites field.

Regarding QD-enabled LEDs makers, Hwang says that joint efforts in the field, for example between Nexxus Lighting and QD Vision, NN Labs and Renaissance, and Nanosys and Samsung.

Nexxus/QD Vision introduced the first commercial LED lamp line that uses QDs in May 2009, and actually started to ship the bulbs in March 2010. The allure of QDs is that it improves the color quality and warms LED light, thereby avoiding some of the pitfalls that have limited the acceptance of CFL bulbs. The Nexxus/QD Vision approach is to apply a thin film of QD to the external face of LEDs. The companies say their “Array Quantum LED” bulbs are six times more efficient than incandescent ones. They aren’t cheap, with some online suppliers selling them for $100+ per bulb.

NN Lab’s angle is that it’s QDs are made from indium phosphide. It describes this as an environment-friendly alternative to the typical cadmium selenide-based QDs, developed in collaboration with the University of Arkansas. NNCrystal, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hangzhou Najing Technology Co., has licensed NN Lab’s Qshift Lucid and Coral technologies and is working with Renaissance Lighting to introduce a line of Solia-branded lighting products. This is also a coating-on-LED approach.

Hwang says that the 12% cut in energy use is an extremely optimistic number based on a 10-year model. He cautions that 1.6% is a more realistic energy decrease, but says several external factors, such as government policy and the price of oil, can significantly influence the adoption of these technologies. He also says the five-year cycle for automotive development will introduce a lag between adoption of a technology and a product hitting that marketplace.

Hwang also tells me that they chose the three countries because they were good proxies for developed economies in the Americas, Europe in Asia.

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Ceralink's Microwave Technology Center

The DOE is giving a total of $13 million to 48 industrial energy-efficiency R&D projects, many of which will have either a direct bearing on ceramic and cementitious materials development and manufacturing including several new opportunities for high-temperature materials applications. An additional $5 million in matching grants is being ponied up by the private sector.

The awards, part of DOE’s Industrial Technologies Program, are targeted for the “development of transformational industrial processes and technologies that can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” The ITP awards come in four  topic areas:

Next Generation Manufacturing Concepts - These manufacturing concepts address the goal of reducing the energy intensity or greenhouse gas emissions of industrial systems by a minimum of 25 percent.

Energy Intensive Processes - These projects address specific technology areas that are expected to generate large energy-saving benefits across a variety of industries and transform the way major manufacturing processes use energy. The following specific technology areas are included: Reactions and Separations; High-Temperature Processing; Waste Heat Minimization and Recovery; and Sustainable Manufacturing.

Advanced Materials - These projects focus on Thermal and Degradation Resistant Materials and Materials for Energy Systems.

Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction - These projects address transformational technologies that offer not only carbon intensity reductions, but also absolute carbon reductions.

The list of awards is long, but here are a few highlights:

3M is getting nearly $800,000 to develop of new high-temperature low-cost ceramic media/catalyst support for use in natural gas surface combustion burners with lower NO_x emissions.

Alcoa is getting $397,00 to develop a novel membrane purification cell to produce pure aluminum from recycled scrap.

Aspen Aerogels is getting $375,000 to develop a new nanoporous silica-based  high-temperature aerogel  for high-temperature steam and process pipes (450–650°C) to make a durable product with improved water repellency and decreased dusting).

CCS Materials Inc. is getting $382,000 to develop hydrate-free, non-Portland cement concrete for building facades. The aim, first, is to create a CO₂-negative inorganic binding phase and, second, develop a method to reduce the energy required to make concrete by 60% and CO2 emissions by more than 90%. These objectives will be accomplished using a patent-pending process called low-temperature solidification.

Ceralink is getting $1.21 million for three RF and microwave-related projects. The first is to establish the manufacturing potential of RF glass lamination process (a low-energy alternative to autoclaving) for auto and solar panel glass. The other two projects involve microwave-enhanced direct cracking of hydrocarbon feedstock and energy-efficient microwave calcination of limestone.

Eaton Corp. is getting $373,000 to develop nanocoatings technology for high-contact stress environments
using new compositions (al-mag-borides) and coating methods.

Hi-Z Technology is getting $500,000 to develop and commercialize thermoelectric devices based on Si/SiGe quantum well materials as ultra-thin films that, for example, could increase the efficiency to 40% of the conversion of thermal energy in hot waste gas to electric energy.

Rive Technology Inc. is getting $762,000 for advanced nanostructured molecular sieves (mesoporous zeolite containing adsorbents) for energy-efficient industrial separation of propane from propylene.

Structured Materials Industries Inc. is getting $315,000 low cost production of InGaN for next-generation photovoltaic devices and LEDs.

UES Inc. is getting $300,000 to develop and commercialize next-generation super-hard, nano-crystalline and multilayered multifunctional coatings, with at least double service life. The coating materials include nitrides and borides and the processes include magnetron sputtering ion plating and large area filtered arc deposition.

Univ. of California, Santa Cruz is getting $348,000 to develop a transformational print-based manufacturing process for fabricating photovoltaics and solid state lighting on thin plastic substrates.

Univ. of the Pacific is getting $367,000 to research and develop a new silica-alumina based cementitious material (i.e., non-limestone) largely using coal refuse as a constituent that will be ideal for mine backfill, mine sealing and waste disposal stabilization.

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Companiesandmarkets.com is offering a new 70-page report that analyzes the global market for aerogels by following end-use markets: thermal and acoustic insulation, consumer products, sensors and Instrumentation, medical, aerospace, energy and others. The report contains separate analyses for US, Europe and the rest of world, with forecasts through 2015.

The report profiles 11 companies including many key and niche players worldwide such as American Aerogel, Aspen Aerogels, Cabot, Marketech International and TAASI. The publisher says the market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research, noting that the company profiles are mostly extracted from online sources.

Material wise, the report covers silica and carbon aerogels plus cryogels and xerogels. It also covers technological developments including aerogel integration with fibers and yarns. On the business side, the report delves into recent product innovations and industry activities.

The report costs $4,500 but a view of the table of contents is provided for free.

Read more about aerogel:

Video: Aerogel insulation hits housing market

Aerogel-based -40°C hydration system to be licensed

Solar Decathlon entries make use of aerogel

Aeroclay research at Case Western

NASA’s aerogel grid captures amino acid in space

Cabot”s Nanogel aerogel insulation selected for 50 km of subsea pipelines

Artistic aerogel light demonstrations

Aerogel used in classic car remake

Aerogel’s potential to mop up oil spills

Aerogel has potential as tunable waveplate

Universe’s largest catcher’s mitt?

Birdair demonstrates aerogel membrane roofing systems

Nanotube aerogel sheets - better than real muscle?

Introduction to aerogel video

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