Saturday, December 13, 2008

IUMRS-ICA

http://www.iumrs-ica2008.jp/index.html



Went to International Union of Materials Research Society - International Conference in Asia (IUMRS-ICA) at Nagoya Congress Center, yesterday. Went there to meet Prof. Gadkari, actually. I had discussion with a Chinese researcher presenting about Gallium Nitride (GaN) bulk crystal growth from Gifu University (Japan). The topic was near to what I'm doing for my research, so it's quite a wonderful discussion. Also had discussion about TiO2 deposition with other researcher, also in my interest to be applied in mirror facet coating for my laser-diode (LD).

Gadkari also taught me new thing, it's about thermo-photovoltaic. This is really amazing! Normal solar-cell use photovoltaic mechanism to absorb photon (light) energy from sun, however, in thermo-photovoltaic, even small thermal energy from human body can be used to generate another energy! So, you can generate energy from not only sunlight, but also from sun-heat during the day. In the night, when there is no sunlight, heat from sleeping human body itself can generate energy! WOW! Gadkari is thinking to use his I*S* to enable this, due to its small band-gap, just around 0.2 eV. With small band-gap, even a small source energy can generate another energy. Haha... never been taught this thing at my laboratory. I realized today that my research group here're toooo stereotype!

Okay, that's all for this morning. Will go for "jalan-jalan" (shopping, eating out) with Gadkari this afternoon.

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