A startup called Transphorm has announced a technology that could eliminate the bulky charging bricks that come with laptops and other devices. It could also make data centers and electric cars more efficient.
The company has been developing the technology in secret over the last four years and has raised $38 million so far from investors such as Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. It will unveil its first products in two weeks.
Umesh Mishra, the CEO and cofounder of Transphorm, estimates that 10 percent of the electricity generated in the United States is wasted by power electronics—a broad class of components that change the properties of electricity for different applications. Some power electronics convert high-voltage AC power to lower-voltage DC to run a laptop or a Web server, for example. Others convert DC power from a battery pack in an electric car into AC to run the motor. In addition to wasting electricity, existing power electronics can be bulky, partly because they generate waste heat that must be dissipated with heat sinks, fans, or radiators.
Transphorm has developed power electronics based on gallium nitride, a semiconductor that Mishra says wastes far less power than the silicon components used in conventional devices. Not only are these electronics more efficient, they can also do without some of the bulky cooling systems. For example, the company hopes to reduce the size of the charger bricks required by laptops today—or eliminate them altogether by incorporating the necessary electronics into the computer itself. The more compact design is also important for automobile applications, where space is limited and weight is important to fuel efficiency. Mishra says the company believes it can reduce wasted electricity by 90 percent.
source : http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/32430/?p1=A3
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