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Dean Richard Newton, flanked by chemsitry Dean Clayton Hancock (left), ITRI President Johnsee Lee and Arun Majumdar, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the ITRI/UC Berkeley Research Center, signs the collaborative agreement creating the ITRI Center. (Peg Skorpinski photo)

"Energy is the single biggest technological issue that will haunt us for the next 50 years," says UC Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Arun Majumdar. "The environmental impact of continuing to use fossil fuels means that we have to look for other ways of producing energy."

To extend the search, UC Berkeley has entered an historic collaboration with Taiwan's largest research organization, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). The Berkeley-ITRI Research Center will spur development of powerful energy technologies based on the university's nanoscale innovations--from flexible solar cells fabricated onto plastic to a "bio battery" powered by the glucose in your body.

This panel contains eight plastic solar cells based on nanorods and semiconducting polymers. The shuny ovals are the aluminum back electrodes of the individual solar cells. (UC Berkeley photo)

According to Majumdar, director of the Center, the new collaboration provides ITRI with "immediate access to UC Berkeley's basic research and the Silicon Vallley ecosystem."

"For us, it will help Berkeley continue to bring in the best people from around the world," he says.

The Berkeley-ITRI Research Center is affiliated with the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). ITRI will provide $500,000 per year for five years to support ITRI Fellows, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers working on the Center's projects. Visiting ITRI researchers hosted by the university will work with the ITRIS Fellows and affiliated faculty.

"The nanotube in this transmission electron micrograph image has an internal diameter of about 10 nanometers, or 1/10,000 the diameter of a human hair. Nanotubes could be used as the basis for highly efficient energy conversion and storage devices." (courtesy the researchers)

For instance, mechanical engineering professor Carlos Fernandez-Pello is designing microreactors that could power laptop computers for hours longer than today's batteries. The reactors would utilize catalysts developed by Berkeley chemistry professor Gabor Somorjai. Meanwhile, Majumdar and his research group are studying semiconductor nanostructures with thermoelectric properties that convert heat into electricity and grow cold when current flows them. Someday, the materials could lead to power generators that run on waste heat, or even solid-state home refrigerators that are incredibly energy efficient.

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Already, he adds, a Berkeley-ITRI collaboration is underway to develop a novel nanotech-enabled battery that converts salt water into electricity. ITRI researcher Ming-Chang Lu contributed expertise in the fabrication of nanofluidic arrays, the tiny "plumbing" system embedded in the device.

"All of the fundamental processes of energy conversion occur at the nanometer scale," Majumdar says. "So if you can manipulate things down at those scales, you might be able to increase the performance of existing devices and even create new methods of converting and storing energy."

Arun Majumdar's home page

UC Berkeley Nano-Engineering

"UC Berkeley teams with Taiwanese research institute to spur tech development" by Robert Sanders (Media Relations)

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)

Carlos Fernandez-Pello's home page

Somorjai Research Group

"Body Battery" by David Pescovitz (Lab Notes, August 2002)

Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society

Lab Notes is published online by the Public Affairs Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. The Lab Notes mission is to illuminate groundbreaking research underway today at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our lives tomorrow.

Media contact: Teresa Moore, Lab Notes editor, Director of Public Affairs
Writer, Researcher: David Pescovitz
Web Manager: Michele Foley

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© 2004 UC Regents. Updated 7/27/04.