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RF Micro to get into solar power

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

(Updated Thursday, July 2 - 5:24 am)

By Mark Binker
Staff Writer

GREENSBORO — RF Micro Devices will use much of the same technology it has now as it starts working to help produce a new generation of cells that convert sunlight into power, company officials said Wednesday.

“As big as the cell phone industry is today, it absolutely pales in comparison to the potential for renewable energy,” said Robert Bruggeworth, president and chief executive officer of the company.

The company has made its name producing components that prolong battery life and amplify signals for mobile phones out of gallium arsenide, a compound that Bruggeworth said has good properties for conveying and managing power.

As part of a deal signed Wednesday, the company will work with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop solar cells out of the same material.

The laboratory has designed a type of solar cell that can produce twice as much power from the same amount of sunlight as solar cells that are on the market now.

“The next step is to get into the marketplace quickly,” said Dan Arvizu, director of the laboratory. “The technology that was in our laboratories in the mid-70s is today’s commercial product.”

Such a decades-long turnaround is too slow, Arvizu said. The country needs to add much more renewable energy sources to its portfolio quickly, he said.

That’s where the partnership with the company comes in. The company is in charge of figuring out how to produce the new type of solar chip on a scale big enough to supply the makers of solar arrays.

“We’re trying to learn the recipe, if you will,” Bruggeworth said. “They’ve been able to do it in a lab that’s very controlled and you make one. We have to get it where you can make millions.”

Because the new chips can do more energy conversion over a smaller area, Bruggeworth said they would help save money by allowing manufacturers to build smaller arrays.

He estimated it would take the company two-and-half years to develop the process for producing the new type of solar cells commercially.

That work will be done at a factory across the street from its Greensboro headquarters. When the company is ready to begin production, that work could be done at any of its six manufacturing plants around the world.

“As we develop the market, there’s no reason it couldn’t be every bit as big as what we have today,” Bruggeworth said.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com

Accompanying Photos

File photo (News & Record)

Photo Caption: RF Micro Device's headquarters in Greensboro.

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sekrph

July 1, 2009 - 10:40 pm EDT

typical.......a company who lays off hundreds and hundreds of qualified workers, both in production and administration......turns around and hires an executive at a salary that covered lots of workers, now wants to get into something they know nothing about, and probably offering new "jobs" to people at the lowest possible wages they can get away with....forgetting all the loyal employees who stuck with them until the layoffs, ....
if this company does some sort of callback for former employees, that would be good, but I would be shocked....
time for this has been company basically to re-stock the fish pond with cheap labor on an expensive idea..

BRING BACK THE LAID OFF EMPLOYESS BOTH IN PRODUCTION AND ADMINISTRATION AND THEN UTILIZE THEIR SKILLS 1ST !!!

otherwise, this company needs to go under..

Sinstruments

July 4, 2009 - 12:02 am EDT

You should learn something about technology before you leave things in comments directly off the cuff.

NREL has been able to make 40.2% efficient triple junction cells that nearly double the efficiency of standard flat plate Si solar. The problem is that the companies that are producing HCPV, Emcore & Spectrolab, have been geared toward space which is a very small production market. What needs to happen is that a player with a mind towards mass production, ie standard cellular (read RF) communications, has to step in a say yes we are willing to gamble a bit and believe that GaAs triple junctions will be just as reliable as Silicon. If someone is not willing to risk something then there will not be any real movement forward.

In order to survive, HCPV and PV in general has to take advantage of economies of scale. The companies that have been able to survive in the communications market since the late 90's and past the 00's bubble clearly have a mind towards the realism of semiconductor/communications manufacture. To call a venture into a market that is as wholly untapped as energy (average of 16TW consumption with 5GW, read .005TW installed) risky is absurd. In order to survive semiconductor companies can't focus on technologies and technicians of the past. Fat needs to be cut, technology developed, and eventually technicians retrained.

Communications companies can move from knowing about transistors and receivers to knowing simply about a series of pn junctions which are intrinsically simpler. Certainly there are unknowns in all technologies but moving backwards to a set of the technology you know well is always good. In the end this will likely produce an enormous amount of new jobs, and provide the global community with a source of energy with a largely better environmental impact.
-kf