Energy efficiency: challenges for semiconductors in twenty-first Century

The growth rate of global energy demand is much higher than that of traditional energy supply, but the semiconductor industry can help improve the efficiency of energy production, transportation and consumption.

Since ancient times, energy has become the main driving force of civilization and progress. Our ancestors discovered that the fire was able to keep them from predators, to warm the caves they lived in, to cook things and to expand their living space. The fire is the key factor of human transition from the stone age to the bronze age, the same for eighteenth Century the industrial revolution and modern society is very important, through human steam engine converts heat energy into mechanical energy. The ancient Egyptians used oil as fuel, and Marco Polo brought back the "Blackstone" from China to europe.

Humans have long been dependent on oil - driven vehicles and coal - driven power plants. For example, more than 90% of energy consumption in the United States comes from non renewable resources. Even as the world continues to focus on clean and renewable resources, there is still a need to invest more in research and development to make this alternative energy mainstream. Science and technology play an important role in improving the efficiency of energy utilization and transforming the alternative energy from the laboratory to the global scale.

Global energy challenges

The growth in global energy demand is much faster than the supply of what we usually call fossil fuels. The U. S. Energy Department predicts that global energy demand will grow at a rate of 40% by 2030 to reach 700quadrillionBTU (UK thermal unit of 1015). This increase in demand is determined by a number of factors, including the economic boom in emerging economies. For example, China's annual new generating capacity of 50~80GW, which is almost equivalent to the annual electricity generation in the United kingdom.

The growth in energy demand poses a challenge to the economy, the environment and foreign policy. Global energy issues require an international wide range of strategies to seek solutions. These efforts from the government and companies in different industries. Academia and research institutes have also played an important role, because we face these challenges require unprecedented new methods to solve. Because the challenges we face are severe and urgent, we need to coordinate efforts to avoid unnecessary waste.

The strategy focuses on:

Improve the utilization rate of renewable resources in the field of power generation.

Improving the efficiency of power transmission by optimizing the power network.

Improve the efficiency of factories, buildings, equipment, computers, cars and other products, thus reducing power consumption.

Science and technology play a central role in all of these areas, so that we can "consume less energy, do more things", so that people will not be able to reduce the pursuit of a better life because of energy problems. In recent decades, semiconductor chips have become the driving force behind innovation in all areas. Since 1978, IC has improved the efficiency of vehicles by up to 40%, the efficiency of civil aircraft has increased by 121%, the field of lighting increased by a factor of 339%, while the computer system is improved by an astonishing $3000000%. 2. Therefore, the semiconductor industry plays a very important role in the global energy issues with the system and service providers.

Power generation: increasing the use of renewable resources

Academia, industry and government have focused on renewable resources. Researchers around the world are working on how to make use of solar energy, wind energy, biomass energy and other resources. Semiconductor technology plays an important role in promoting the use of renewable resources and making it mainstream.

All of the energy must first convert energy into electrical energy. For example, converting the sun's rays into electricity. Obviously, the higher the efficiency of energy conversion, the more energy we can use to produce it. Chips are often able to help improve the conversion efficiency. For example: the use of advanced chip technology can improve the efficiency of solar energy conversion to 20~40%. In contrast, the current conversion efficiency of solar technology is only 5%.

Compared with fossil fuels, renewable energy is the biggest challenge is the lack of cost advantage. Currently the best solar energy costs higher than the cost of coal energy 2~3 times. Semiconductor technology can help reduce the cost of alternative energy production - the latest technology, so that the semiconductor manufacturing industry can continue to follow Moore's law forward. The research of nano materials, nano devices and related manufacturing technology plays an important role in promoting the development of alternative fuel manufacturing technology. At present, solar energy technology is also based on the silicon materials used in semiconductor technology, and the current high conversion efficiency of solar cells and semiconductor chip processing technology has a similar form.

Some of the popular alternative energy, such as solar and wind energy, the variability and uncertainty -- not exactly predict the existence of such as: in a specific time and place, the sun or wind strength. The ingenious semiconductor chip and system design can be used to build a model for this variability, which can be compensated in advance, reducing the power sector and the end user fluctuations.

Reduce the loss of power transmission link

The statistical results show that 2/3 of the power consumption is consumed in the power transmission. 3 from another point of view