Power Backup

Japan-based NGK Insulators has transformed an experimental battery-which Ford Motor pursued for use in electric cars for more than 30 years-into a technology that could help manage the production of electric power. Each cell in the sodium and sulfur battery produces two volts when positively charged sodium ions pass through a ceramic tube and combine with negatively charged sulfur. Earlier versions of the technology could provide about 50 kilowatts, enough to supplement an office building's power supply during peak hours. By improving the ceramic's purity, NGK was able to reduce its thickness by 25 percent, to 1.3 millimeters. That in turn lowered its electrical resistance. The reduced resistance, combined with an altered design, allows the new battery to switch on in less than a millisecond and deliver 250 kilowatts, enough to supply backup juice during temporary power failures. This summer, NGK brought one of the new batteries on line for U.S. utility provider American Electric Power at one of its plants in Ohio.

Holographic Discs

One of the chief obstacles to the commercial development of holographic data storage, with its potentially vast capacity, may be starting to crumble. Holographic storage requires a photosensitive material in which specially modulated light beams can etch the data-bearing patterns that form when they intersect. Researchers at Aprilis, a Polaroid spinoff in Maynard, MA, think they've found just the thing: a silicone-based polymer that holds three to four times more data than competing holographic materials and that shrinks very little when struck by a data-writing laser. In other systems, shrinkage is a problem that introduces errors into recorded data.

"For holographic data storage to be successful, we needed to develop an entirely new material," says Aprilis cofounder Parag Mehta. Prototype devices using Aprilis's material store close to 200 gigabytes on a CD-sized disc-about 300 times as much as a conventional CD-ROM holds. Aprilis plans to supply commercial partners with its photopolymer and expects to see devices incorporating the material on the market in the next year or two.

OLEDs on the Move

Automobile and airplane display panels could soon get a face-lift from a new breed of organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. Existing versions of the organic diodes are used in some cell phones but tend to burn out at high temperatures. By combining different materials, researchers at the Xerox Research Centre of Canada in Mississauga, Ontario, have developed an organic diode that can survive at up to 80 C for 10,000 hours, says Xerox researcher Tony Paine. That's a tenfold improvement that could open the door to wider use of the technology. Unlike today's ubiquitous liquid crystal displays, organic light-emitting diodes can be viewed from any angle; they also use less power, generate brighter, sharper images and "switch" images faster for smoother video. In the next year or two, Xerox researchers aim to incorporate their technology into displays.