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Energy Conversion Devices press release
http://www.ovonic.com/news_events/5_2_press_releases/20040707.htm

ECD Ovonics Announces Settlement in Patent Infringement Dispute

COBASYS and Panasonic EV Energy to cooperate in the development of
next-generation state-of-the-art nickel metal hydride batteries

Rochester Hills, Mich., July 7, 2004 -- Energy Conversion Devices,
Inc. (ECD Ovonics) (NASDAQ:ENER) today announced that it and COBASYS
LLC, its 50-50 manufacturing joint venture with ChevronTexaco
Technology Ventures LLC, have entered into a settlement agreement
with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (MEI), Panasonic EV
Energy Co., Ltd. (PEVE), and Toyota Motor Corporation with respect to
patent infringement disputes and counterclaims involving nickel metal
hydride (NiMH) batteries before the International Chamber of
Commerce, International Court of Arbitration. Under the terms of the
settlement, no party admitted any liability.

Under the terms of the settlement, COBASYS and PEVE will cross
license each other for current and future patents to avoid possible
future litigation. COBASYS and PEVE have agreed to a technical
cooperation agreement to advance the state-of-the-art of NiMH
batteries which are widely used in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).
COBASYS and PEVE have also established a joint development program to
collaborate on the development of next-generation high performance
NiMH batteries for HEVs.

The parties reached an amicable settlement on mutually satisfactory
terms that will help them to meet the requirements of expanding the
HEV market. Details of the settlement are confidential.

For more information about ECD Ovonics, please visit
http://www.ovonic.com/

For more information about COBASYS, please visit
http://www.cobasys.com/

# # #

This release may contain forward-looking statements within the
meaning of the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are
based on assumptions which ECD Ovonics, as of the date of this
release, believes to be reasonable and appropriate. ECD Ovonics
cautions, however, that the actual facts and conditions that may
exist in the future could vary materially from the assumed facts and
conditions upon which such forward-looking statements are based.

Contacts:
Ghazaleh Koefod, Shareholder Relations
Dick Thompson, Media Relations
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.
248.293.0440

Raymond Wagner
VP Marketing, Cobasys LLC
248.637.7400

--------------

Next time, instead of saying "I know things and you don't, so nyeah nyeah nyeah", say what you know. This is slashdot. My only error was in saying the injunction was permanent when in fact it persists only until 2010, and we only know that for certain this year after Toyota announced their plans for 2010, as the terms of the settlement were confidential for the past 6 years.

Asshole.

Energy Conversion Devices press release
http://www.ovonic.com/news_events/5_2_press_releases/20040707.htm

ECD Ovonics Announces Settlement in Patent Infringement Dispute

COBASYS and Panasonic EV Energy to cooperate in the development of
next-generation state-of-the-art nickel metal hydride batteries

Rochester Hills, Mich., July 7, 2004 -- Energy Conversion Devices,
Inc. (ECD Ovonics) (NASDAQ:ENER) today announced that it and COBASYS
LLC, its 50-50 manufacturing joint venture with ChevronTexaco
Technology Ventures LLC, have entered into a settlement agreement
with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (MEI), Panasonic EV
Energy Co., Ltd. (PEVE), and Toyota Motor Corporation with respect to
patent infringement disputes and counterclaims involving nickel metal
hydride (NiMH) batteries before the International Chamber of
Commerce, International Court of Arbitration. Under the terms of the
settlement, no party admitted any liability.

Under the terms of the settlement, COBASYS and PEVE will cross
license each other for current and future patents to avoid possible
future litigation. COBASYS and PEVE have agreed to a technical
cooperation agreement to advance the state-of-the-art of NiMH
batteries which are widely used in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).
COBASYS and PEVE have also established a joint development program to
collaborate on the development of next-generation high performance
NiMH batteries for HEVs.

The parties reached an amicable settlement on mutually satisfactory
terms that will help them to meet the requirements of expanding the
HEV market. Details of the settlement are confidential.

For more information about ECD Ovonics, please visit
http://www.ovonic.com/

For more information about COBASYS, please visit
http://www.cobasys.com/

# # #

This release may contain forward-looking statements within the
meaning of the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are
based on assumptions which ECD Ovonics, as of the date of this
release, believes to be reasonable and appropriate. ECD Ovonics
cautions, however, that the actual facts and conditions that may
exist in the future could vary materially from the assumed facts and
conditions upon which such forward-looking statements are based.

Contacts:
Ghazaleh Koefod, Shareholder Relations
Dick Thompson, Media Relations
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.
248.293.0440

Raymond Wagner
VP Marketing, Cobasys LLC
248.637.7400

--------------

Next time, instead of saying "I know things and you don't, so nyeah nyeah nyeah", say what you know. This is slashdot. My only error was in saying the injunction was permanent when in fact it persists only until 2010, and we only know that for certain this year after Toyota announced their plans for 2010, as the terms of the settlement were confidential for the past 6 years.

Asshole.

http://www.ovonic.com/PDFs/media_room/ovonyx_ovonic-unified-memory_dec04.pdf (PDF WARNING)

Why worry about random I/O on disk? :)

Hi: At least look to the people who know. Get in touch for info. http://www.ovonic.com/

...the reliable low-cost high-production facilities already exist, as the process deviates very little from the CMOS manufacturing process. It's the same material that is used in rewritable optical media, and on top of that, it's basically just glass. Where you once needed stable unchanging silicon for memory/data storage, now we're just using different states of glass. Most of your concerns are addressed in this technology, and this is why I'm watching it very closely. Go read up a bit here. (PDF WARNING)

Oh, it also does have the theoretical capability to replace SRAM and DRAM. But in order for it to do that, it would need to be a little faster and we would have to be able to fully exploit all four states that it can be in for data. Also, read/write cycles would need a few more orders of growth to be used as a processor cache or extended RAM replacement, but as it is they're great for hard disk usage.

Keep in mind that IC is at best 20 percent efficient (Wikipedia), so most of that gasoline is wasted. I can't nail down efficiency for batteries/electric motors, but these guys claim 93 percent for their battery, even if it's half that it's still much more efficient. So you'd only need half (or maybe even less) of the electricity suggested by your figures.
Still a pretty big hit on the ol' grid.

Ovonic of Rochester Michigan has had this solid hydrogen storage technology for atleast the last 4 years. Check out their website: http://www.ovonic.com/eb_hy_hydrogen_sol.cfm

Try telling any green environmental lefty that Ethanol is a bad thing and show them why, and they turn their nose saying, "But, but, but, but its GREEN!"

While the whole thing is a little more complicated. Ovshinsky was the first one to get patent on this area, and he opened a company named Ovonics. Then Ovonics created a company named Ovonyx with a cofounder of Micron. Ovonyx is focused on the Phase Change RAM while Ovonics keeps working on things like Fuel cell, Solar cell, batteries...

Gordon Moore of Intel was also one of the early researchers on the area of Phasse Change RAM. In 2000, Intel invested some big money into Ovonyx and get the license of Phase Change RAM from Ovonyx. Samsung licensed the Phase Change RAM from Ovonyx later.

Ovonics invented the technology and holds many key patents. They have a 50/50 joint venture with oil company Chevron/Texaco, but it's quite a stretch from that to claiming "the oil industry owns the patent". This is particularly true when NiMH cells have been sold since 1983, which means the earliest patents on NiMH technology have already expired. The joint venture looks more like Texaco exploring strategies for survival in the post-peak-oil era than an evil plot to kill the hybrid car.

The average coal plant produces 600 megawatts of electricity Link. The entire output of an Ovionics Solar Cell assemply plant is enough electricity to produce 30 megawatts a year if all solar cells are used simultaneously, in sunny weather, during the day Link. That means that you have to have 20 years worth of production from that plant to get enough solar cells to equal a coal plant. Wind is a little better with the largest onshore turbines producing 2.5megawatts Link.
Or about 240 needed to reproduce a coal plant, when the wind is blowing. There are about 62 gigawatts of new generating capacity in the works, according to the CS monitor story, for the continental U.S.

But what about solar powered homes? The average home uses 10656 kw/h per year or about 1.21 kw constant load Link. The average aluminum smelting plant uses 300mw of electricity or 250,000 times as much Link. The average chemical plant uses 12mw constant load or almost 1000x as much Link. There are lots of similar industrial users. <sarcasm> Of course, who needs all those plants anyway? Doesn't produce anything usefull? All just pollution right? </sarcasm>

Sure there's plenty of little stuff we can do about the energy problems of the world but I think the problem is far far bigger than most people imagine. So basically given the above, environmentalists really have no solution to the world's energy problem except de-industrialization and I really doubt we are going to go along with that much less China, India, Russia, or Brazil. There you go, with a little math I spoiled the whole alternative energy debate. You have read the last chapter of the book on Global warming: There is no solution (except nuclear!). If you have some alternative examples show me and please make sure they include actual figures in megawatts. Not things like "wind energy potential" but instead, how long it would take to build, how much money, how much energy would be provided, etc. BTW, I'm not saying that some technological revolution isn't going to save us but please, let's get some numbers into the discussion!

I first heard about ECD in this transcript of a Scientific American Frontiers episode. Two segments on them, one talks about storing hydrogen as a solid (in alloy hydrides) and the second talks about their solar panel tech. Sort of ironic to see them pop up in this thread...

I first heard about ECD in this transcript of a Scientific American Frontiers episode. Two segments on them, one talks about storing hydrogen as a solid (in alloy hydrides) and the second talks about their solar panel tech. Sort of ironic to see them pop up in this thread...

Solid hydrogen storage is now avialable: http://www.txohydrogen.com/solutions/technology.ht m/ Also the inventors site has other cool related energy stuff http://www.ovonic.com/

Intel is currently working on a flash replacement called OUM (Ovonic Unified Memory). You can see their presentations here (bottom of page). STMicroelectronics is also working on the technology (among several others) and has announced a preliminary version of the technology that has 10^11 cycle endurance. This is 5 orders of magnatude greater than flash. Intel is shooting for 10^15 or higher in order to get DRAM equivalence for "most" PCs and servers. That is, "most" PCs and servers aren't flipping a single bit more than 1,000,000,000,000,000 times in their lifetime.

Perhaps Im jaded, but why, exactly, cant we economically synthesize fuel?

We can. But there is one problem.

We can economically synthesize electricity. Electricity can be applied to water in order to separate the hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen and oxygen can later be rejoined (in a fuel cell) to produce electricity. This seems very simple but there are two big problems:

1) Today's fuel cells require large amounts of platinum. Although some companies sell fuel cells today, they are nothing more than a lab curiosity - you'll never see them powering more than a few prototype cars on the road because nobody will be able to afford them.

2) Hydrogen storage - hydrogen would be the perfect fuel if you could store lots of it with good gravimetric and volumetric densities. Right now, there is no method to stick a bunch (mass) of hydrogen into a small package. Even liquid hydrogen is lighter than air, not to mention that it would freeze the hell out of everything in the event of an accident. Right now, solid hydrogen is the most promising but still has a long way to go.

So yes - we can economically synthesize fuel. We just can't store it or make economical use of it. FWIW, today's nickel-metal hydride batteries are nothing more than closed-loop fuel cells. They contain water which is separated into hydrogen and oxygen when they are charged. The hydrogen and oxygen are recombined to produce electricity on-demand. The inventor of the NiMH battery is working on making this into an open-loop fuel cell. Since the battery version uses no precious metals, this is the most promising (IMHO) fuel cell for economical, volume fuel cell devices.

Think of it as a refillable battery instead of rechargeable.

Perhaps Im jaded, but why, exactly, cant we economically synthesize fuel?

We can. But there is one problem.

We can economically synthesize electricity. Electricity can be applied to water in order to separate the hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen and oxygen can later be rejoined (in a fuel cell) to produce electricity. This seems very simple but there are two big problems:

1) Today's fuel cells require large amounts of platinum. Although some companies sell fuel cells today, they are nothing more than a lab curiosity - you'll never see them powering more than a few prototype cars on the road because nobody will be able to afford them.

2) Hydrogen storage - hydrogen would be the perfect fuel if you could store lots of it with good gravimetric and volumetric densities. Right now, there is no method to stick a bunch (mass) of hydrogen into a small package. Even liquid hydrogen is lighter than air, not to mention that it would freeze the hell out of everything in the event of an accident. Right now, solid hydrogen is the most promising but still has a long way to go.

So yes - we can economically synthesize fuel. We just can't store it or make economical use of it. FWIW, today's nickel-metal hydride batteries are nothing more than closed-loop fuel cells. They contain water which is separated into hydrogen and oxygen when they are charged. The hydrogen and oxygen are recombined to produce electricity on-demand. The inventor of the NiMH battery is working on making this into an open-loop fuel cell. Since the battery version uses no precious metals, this is the most promising (IMHO) fuel cell for economical, volume fuel cell devices.

Think of it as a refillable battery instead of rechargeable.

Copyright 2004 Exxon Mobile. All rights reserved. This material may be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The reality:

ChevronTexaco is an investor in ECD Ovonics - the company that owns the popular NiMH battery technology that is popular in hybrid autos. Toyota gets their NiMH batteries from Matsushita/Panasonic, who are conveniently not paying the 3 percent royalty. So, the two companies have been tied up in the courts for years now battling this out. Last year, they moved into arbitration and that will be released this month. Although it was wrong for Matsushita to steal the technology, it is going to look bad when Toyota hybrids are banned from importation due to a lawsuit coming from a ChevronTexaco joint-venture.

Copyright 2004 Exxon Mobile. All rights reserved. This material may be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The reality:

ChevronTexaco is an investor in ECD Ovonics - the company that owns the popular NiMH battery technology that is popular in hybrid autos. Toyota gets their NiMH batteries from Matsushita/Panasonic, who are conveniently not paying the 3 percent royalty. So, the two companies have been tied up in the courts for years now battling this out. Last year, they moved into arbitration and that will be released this month. Although it was wrong for Matsushita to steal the technology, it is going to look bad when Toyota hybrids are banned from importation due to a lawsuit coming from a ChevronTexaco joint-venture.

Copyright 2004 Exxon Mobile. All rights reserved. This material may be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The reality:

ChevronTexaco is an investor in ECD Ovonics - the company that owns the popular NiMH battery technology that is popular in hybrid autos. Toyota gets their NiMH batteries from Matsushita/Panasonic, who are conveniently not paying the 3 percent royalty. So, the two companies have been tied up in the courts for years now battling this out. Last year, they moved into arbitration and that will be released this month. Although it was wrong for Matsushita to steal the technology, it is going to look bad when Toyota hybrids are banned from importation due to a lawsuit coming from a ChevronTexaco joint-venture.

Surely, the answer has to lie in getting the hydrogen from water - we just need a massive breakthrough in solar panel technology.

There doesn't need to be a breakthrough because that has already happened. Stan Ovshinsky, pioneer of disordered materials, has developed a thin-film solar technology that is competitive with grid-supplied fossil fuel electricity. Now, he believes that they can achieve this feat with 100MW of production economy so they aren't quite there yet (they currently run a 30MW machine).

They just partnered with HaveBlue to develop a fuel cell hydrogen sailboat with solid hydrogen storage. The sailboats sit in the harbor most of the time so they are perfect vessels to soak up the sun and convert it to hydrogen.

Water is the best battery. We just need an affordable fuel cell to convert it back into electricity. Stan is working on that too.

Surely, the answer has to lie in getting the hydrogen from water - we just need a massive breakthrough in solar panel technology.

There doesn't need to be a breakthrough because that has already happened. Stan Ovshinsky, pioneer of disordered materials, has developed a thin-film solar technology that is competitive with grid-supplied fossil fuel electricity. Now, he believes that they can achieve this feat with 100MW of production economy so they aren't quite there yet (they currently run a 30MW machine).

They just partnered with HaveBlue to develop a fuel cell hydrogen sailboat with solid hydrogen storage. The sailboats sit in the harbor most of the time so they are perfect vessels to soak up the sun and convert it to hydrogen.

Water is the best battery. We just need an affordable fuel cell to convert it back into electricity. Stan is working on that too.

Here's a company that has part of the contract on this. They are developing the solid (hydride) hydrogen storage system for these tanks. The hydride is like a hydrogen sponge that holds more hydrogen than high-pressure tanks. The biggest problem with hydrogen really is storing it since it is so low in density. Liquid hydrogen is actually lighter than air...

Real memory is rewritable, like CD-RWs

They are actually working on something with the chalcogenide material used in CD-RWs. Its call OUM or Ovonic Unified Memory. Intel is supposedly ahead in the research on this stuff but STMicro and Lockheed Martin are in on it, too.

Google for it to get more info. The cool stuff is that, if this stuff comes to fruition, is that it will eventually replace hard drives - solid state storage with DRAM access speeds. *That* is the future. DISCLAIMER - Gordon Moore wrote a paper on this stuff in the 60s. So it really *is* the future.

Energy Conversion Devices has developed a 30 Megawatt solar machine the size of a football field. The device produces nine miles of solar cell at a time. The amorphous solar cells are not great in terms of ultimate conversion efficiency, but they are unique in that they will put out much more power over their life time than the energy used to produce them. They are great on a watt per dollar basis.

where the other fossil-friendly alternative - namely hydroelectric power - is not an option.

What about solar?

Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. just built a 30 Megawatt solar facility in Auburn Hills, MI for $67 million dollars. That is, the facility has the capacity to produce 30MW of solar fabric (it is not the conventional solar panel that we've all come to know... and it is much cheaper, too) every year. The stuff is guaranteed for 20 years.

With solar like this, I'm not sure why nuclear would need to be brought into the picture.

This isn't a breakthrough. It's just another lead-acid battery powered car. The limits of what you can do with that technology are well known.

There are no good alternatives in volume production. Even the Texaco/Ovonic joint venture seems be going nowhere:

• If you are looking for industrial NiMH batteries, your choices are limited. There is no distribution network for NiMH batteries above 10-Ampere Hours (Ah). Batteries above 10 Ah are manufactured for specialty uses only. Texaco Ovonic Battery Systems does manufacture batteries above 10 Ah; however, they are produced in a limited quantity.

did you know the oil industry owns the patent on NiMH battery technology?

I thought that Energy Conversion Devices did?

...the rubber is really made of flexible solar cells.

Power during the day, camoflage during the night.

You can find a chemical to store hydrogen. That is how a battery works, or make a gas. These people are trying to make solid sodium and a possible product is PowerBalls Problem: It takes 2000 degrees to make solid sodium, and they use methane as part of the process....not very renewable.

You can store it as liquid H2. Getting H2 to -432 degrees takes power. And it is dangerously cold. BMW has been using this method in their hydrogen cars. A liter of liquid H2 has 39,000 watts of power. Alot of power in a small space.

You can store it as a compressed gas. At standard temp and pressure, a liter of H2 has 3.5 watts of power. Not alot of power here, is there? As you increase pressure, more H2 will work its way out of your tank, and embrittle the metal.

Finally, you can shove H2 inbetween metal. TiFe was patented in 1988, and automakers plan on selling Hydrogen cars in 2010. (Do the math, what technology becomes public domain?) Contaminated TiFe can be reclaimed (it is just like mining it) Ti Sponge (pure TI) goes for $3.80-$4.50 a pound. A research site Texico owns part of Ovonic has a few patents on this technology also.

Now, which way should one go here? LH2? Compressed H2? Chemical? or metal lattice storage?

Without good, "safe" storage, H2 won't be more than a playtoy. Anytime you generate, store or use power, there is danger. It is the preception of Hydrogen danger (hindenberg) that needs to be addressed. Some pinto drivers know how dagerous gasoline is...yet we 'accept' the dangers of Gas. Oh, wait. gasoline, Natural Gas, Propane are chemically stored Hydrogen! Eeek, the horror!

Hydrogen is a lot less dense, though. Any idea how many tanker trucks of hydrogen it would take to be equivalent to one tanker truck of gasoline? Not a flame, an honest question...

Okay, I got curious so, I decided to try and figure this out. I pulled some references and looked online, and the answer really surprised me.

This reference gives the energy content of Gasoline as 115,000 BTUs/Gallon = 32 MJ/liter

This reference says that very cold, highly compressed liquid hydrogen has a density 71 g/liter

Adding to that my reference value of 918 kJ/mol for hydrogen combustion, I arrived at an answer of 130 MJ/liter, or 4 times that of gasoline. We should consider that it takes about 40 MJ/liter to compress and cool the hydrogen down to a liquid form (and more energy if you need to keep it cool for a long time), and also that tanks would likely be smaller in order to accomodate cooling and other apparatus. But that still leaves us with the surprising result that transporting liquid hydrogen is around 2-3 times more efficient than transporting liquid gasoline.

The key of course is that liquid hydrogen is so much more dense than room temperature gaseous hydrogen (by a factor of nearly 1000, 71 g/L vs 0.089 g/L gaseous at 20 C). Consumer uses will probably focus on compressed hydrogen or extraction from fossil fuels, since liqifying hydrogen is hard to do, but there is no reason energy suppliers couldn't ship liquid hydrogen if it really is that much more efficient than shipping gasoline.

Please do check my math since this was only just cobbled together.

Anyone intersted in going solar should check out this product from Unisolar. It's about the cheapest I've seen yet. If I've done the math right you could roof a decent sized house with these for about $5000.

here is one of the best solutions i've seen ... ovonic ... check out the presentations ... its a hydrogen storage system that will be compatable with existing infrastructure ... and let's see lithium ion batteries are boasting .6 Wh/g * 1000 g/kg * 3600s/h * 1e-6 MJ/W-s= 2.16 MJ/kg ---42kg/gas * 42MJ-gas/kg / 2.16MJ-batt/kg = only 816 kg (getting better)... the real problem is power ... current batteries cannot draw current fast enough for good performance.

You wrote: "We need a way to show the oil companies that we're fed up of lining their pockets with cash" which is kind of funny since there are so many ways, and so many organisations doing so.
Rule #1: Buy NO unneccessary plastic items. I make an exception, personally, for my kids' legos. But I don't buy a new case for my computer just because the ATX form came out, I hacksaw the old one. Plastics are essentially a waste product of the petroleum industry.
Rule #2: Buy NOTHING from Exxon. Because we need to convince the Oil Barons that there are some things that don't blow over - and Exxon's had the most egregious crimes as well as being the last vestigal trace of the original Petroleum Trust (Standard Oil = S.O. = Esso = Exxon, you can confirm this easily).
Rule #3: Stop whining and do something. I am converting my truck to gas/electric hybrid ASAP. My bud Pete runs used fryer oil in his (unmodified) Mercedes diesel.

Alternative Energy Engineering
Ballard Fuel Cells
Electro Automotive
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.
Greenpeace International Homepage
Home Power Magazine
Hydrogen Web (English/German)
innEVations
Jerry Halstead's Car
Low Rolling Resistance Tires
Phoenix EAA
Roofing Systems
Unique Mobility
Veggie Van (BioDiesel)
Wilde EVolutions catalog
United Solar Systems Home Page

--Charlie

Sticks and Stones may break my bones but FUD will never concern me.

Well, you and most of the others commenting on this issue are sure willing to spread the FUD around....

1) Car battery disposal is not a major pollution problem (manufacture being another issue). Those little ever-readies that you're tossing blithely into the trash are one of the most pressing ecological issues of our time, but people driving electric cars recycle ALL their batteries (the spent cores are quite valuable) and most gas vehicle batteries are also recycled.

2) Point source pollution (i.e. power plants) is easier to control/prevent than distributed pollution (cf. privately operated internal combustion engines). Gas lawn mowers are one of the principal causes of air pollution in the US, incidentally.

3) Many people are supplied power from hydro, wind, or photovoltaic sources. If you actually become a part of the electric vehicle underground you will find that many people are generating their own power, or use power from commercial "green" providers.

Your statement "yes the energy does come from some coal or oil burning plant" is thus incorrect through overgeneralization, which makes it relatively accurate compared to most of what's being posted here. Your comments on ethanol and car prices are similarly FUDular.

Alternative Energy Engineering

Electro Automotive

Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.

Greenpeace International Homepage

Home Power Magazine

innEVations

Jerry Halstead's Car

Low Rolling Resistance Tires

Phoenix EAA

Roofing Systems

Unique Mobility

Wilde EVolutions catalog

United Solar Systems Home Page

The technical details of this article are close to zero, if you look closely.

Read the foils from the presentation of the research report here.

It gives far more detail than I've ever seen for an announcement of any other memory technology. B-)

As soon as I heard the name "Ovonyx" I was reminded of Stanford Ovshinsky, a physicist who claimed to revolutionize amorphous silicon technology, reportedly 'inventing' a field of Materials Science called "ovonics". He was a minor hero to me as a teenager (the 70's). I'm not such a fan now.

Though I can hardly blame /. for not checking further, I think readers might want to.

Sure enough, on the "About the Corporation" page, it confirms: "The Corporation Ovonyx, Inc. (Ovonyx) was formed in 1999 as a joint venture between Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (ECD) and Messrs. Tyler Lowrey and Ward Parkinson. ECD is Ovshinsky's company (founded in 1960). Surprisingly, no link or further information is provided on ECD, which according to the Ovonyx Corporate page "has been actively pursuing phase-change material and device structure development,optimization and characterization for many applications - but principally for optical and electrical memories."

From what I recall from the 70's/80's, ECD wasn't 'focused' in these areas, but on solar panels (hence the name "Energy Conversion Devices"). This may explain why "ECD's contribution to the Ovonyx joint venture was all of its intellectual property (IP) in this area" [optical and electrical memory]. Perhaps ECD didn't feel it could make use of this IP, and turned it over to two former top Micron Technology (chip) execs. Read on for details

THE BACKGROUND
Ovshinsky was a darling of the Japanese in the 70's/80's when Americans were in shock because the Japanese were using American findings like the management theories of Edwards Deming (who was revered like a god in Japan), 'process control', and "just in time" to turn out cars that the US auto giants couldn't match. American business was also awash in culture shock from dealing with the Japanese business systems (kureitsu, etc.) as equals and as a potential market.

Ovshinsky raised money by chiding US corps that they would miss the Next Big Thing if they didn't invest in his work, but his primary business relationships were with the Japanese.

The PBS show NOVA even did a one hour documentary on him ("Japan's American Genius" 10/27/87) that seemed to promise that cheap high efficiency amorphous solar cells would be around any day now. I've kept my eyes peeled ever since (I instantly made the Ovonyx connection in 5/2000!), and never heard anything about ECD. The advances in amorphous technology always seemed to come from elsewhere.

I haven't been impressed by ECD's ability to bring *any* product to market in 40 years, and I don't know of any breakthroughs they have made or licensed -- and all their 'background' and 'product' links seem to point to nonexistent documents in a 'drafts' folder. However, I may be wrong, or perhaps the documents are being updated, so I refer you to ECD's home page, which is (perhaps unsurprisingly, considering Ovshinsky supposedly pioneered 'ovonics') http://www.ovonic.com not to be confused with the OVONYX site in the /. article

Perhaps I am a little jaded, because I was once a big fan of Ovshinsky (as he was presented), but what I've read in the OVONIX and ECD (OVONIC)web sites seems to have an unusual, almost Microsoftian degree of 'spin'. Caveat emptor.

However, if anyone out there knows of some concrete product or technical advance that proceeded directly from ECD or Ovshinsky, I would be *most* happy to hear about it. You have to reclaim those childhood heroes when you can! It's good for the soul.

_____________

For a little background (I'm a chemistry grad student working in this area), the maturing of this technology is good to see, after many years of battle vs. magnetic storage for both CD-RW and non-volatile memory. I think the potential here is very great because of the relative prodcution simplicity and cost benefit compared to competing technologies. This stuff is not vaporware! The technology of phase change media (based upon optically/electrically induced reversible amorphous to crystalline transitions) has been researched extensively over the last two decades by big names like Philips, Micron, 3M, IBM, etc. But magnetic storage had more research money for quite awhile for alot of reasons; however, it's phase change media that eventually got used for your CD-RW (not CD-R though...) discs. Making non-volatile RAM was the next obvious target, but latency was a problem until recently (and the inertia problem of changing manufacturing methods). For some more info, goto the website of the parent company Energy Conversion Devices. It's based out of Troy, Michigan and was founded by Stan Ovshinsky, who's somewhat of a rogue in the physics community. But it's a cool company that also uses a similar technology to make surge protectors against the EMP from a nuclear blast! :)