'Sustainability calls for energy technologies to fulfill yet additional goals related to the longer-terms public good. Our society arrived to a pivotal point where we must address the need to change our daily living and energy consumption towards the sustainable pathways'

SEPTET embraced this statement, an focused on developing future technologies while keeping in mind that energy is a valuable and indispensable resource for human kind, but it needs to be used efficiently and in a sustainable manner. we accomplished this through discovery breakthrough, such as a new concept of energy systems or harvester or simply using what exists making it efficient and sustainable. 'Integrating wind, thermal and solar sustainable system is a technical challenge, integrating materials that can be suitable for solar, thermal and for example rf energy harvesting becomes a materials integration challenge. It requires designing materials that once integrated, the overall energy harvesting efficiency is higher compare to the single material, while they need to be manufactured with industrially compatible technologies'

SEPTET was able to: overcome technical challenges in energy harvesting and energy device integration; was able to disseminate its discoveries; was able to help to educate the society about sustainability and energy. SEPTET included researcher from STEM and from School of Business and From Art. Yes Art. Indeed SEPTET showed how much Art is a very powerful learning tool to address to a large ad broad audience, the complicated concept of physics and engineering.

The most common sources of energy is the light. Light can be converted into electricity using technology. Plants are a very good example on how they are capable to convert light. They are extremely efficient. However human technology is not there yet, not even close and the human made devices available are either efficient and very expensive, or very inefficient and inexpensive with a very short life time. SEPTET under the direction of Professor Sang Han, develop unique technologies over a wide range of electronic materials and fabrication that have real beneficial and cost-effective applications for the public.

Professor Balakrishnan was able to address the fundamental problem of material quality at atomic level and how to 'build' materials that are compatible. In doing so, technologies such as Thermo-photo-voltaic, which are usually available, due to their costs, to a niche market, they can see the future in a wide range of applications such as car industry or in portable electronic. Professor Balakrishnan had outstanding breacktrought to engineering interfacial dislocation arrays in enabling integration of III-Sb on GaAs and Silicon substrates.

We also looked into harvesting the 'radiation' available around us. Just think the energy of the electromagnetic waves that surround our urban areas: wireless internet, cell phone towers...  Professor Busani and Professor Lavrova were able to prove that energy technologies can be integrated in an efficient manner, into devices that are becoming commercially available. They were able to integrate solar cells with thermoelectric and with rf antenna so that the energy harvester can be used to broadcast! And they did using technologies that are available and compatible with current manufacturing process. In this case 'energy harvesting' met the requirement of sustainability. 

SEPTET was a winning proposal not just for its technology breakthroughs, but also for his outreach and for its broader impact! 

Professor Andrea Polli, not a scientist but a "science artist", was able to provided a mean to visualize daily energy consumption in a way that the public can understand. Her work is now part of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta Museum and shared with all visitors. A number of highly visual tools were created for the general public, which increased public awareness of the energy and sustainability picture. Social outcomes emerged directly from this visualization and educational effort, intending to lead to changes in global behavior vis-a-vis energy consumption (https://vimeo.com/192326931).  

Professor Nick Flor, from the Anderson School of Management, designed 3-d interactive, immersive visualizations and apps, which allowed the public to experience novel renewable energy technologies in a virtual space. These apps and the 3-d assets for creating other kinds of virtual spaces can be accessed at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/energy_surge_system/

At the kevel of K-12 education, SEPTET  provided a lithography setup, completely made by 3D printing, that is used to teach the make of semiconductor devices, without using sophisticated, and expensive tools. The first school in Albuquerque to use this new 'tool' is the Albuquerque Institue of Math and Science, under the supervision of Maya Garcia, the high school interim student at UNM.

Finally SEPTET, was able to bring awareness about energy and sustainability into a world wide conference: Materials Research Society. We had 60 oral speakers. Among them we also invited high school teacher and students to present their sustainable projects. One of the invited speaker, Professor Harry Atwater from Caltech said 'Thanks for doing this, we need more initiative like this'.

Last Modified: 11/30/2018
Modified by: Tito Busani