Remarks Prepared for
Dr. Raymond L. Orbach
Under Secretary for Science
U.S. Department of Energy
Energy Task Force Meeting
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Upton, NY
August 10, 2007

Good morning. I would first like to thank Congressman Israel for inviting me to speak to the Energy Task Force today. I would also like to thank Congressman Israel and Congressman Bishop for their leadership and support of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.
 
The scientific expertise and research capabilities here at Brookhaven and its Center for Functional Nanomaterials address the very core of what I am going to talk about today.

As you are all well aware, one of the biggest challenges we face as Americans today and in the coming decades is that of energy security. I would like to say a few words this morning about the vital role that research at the nanoscale, here at Brookhaven National Laboratory, will play if we are to meet this challenge successfully.

Global energy consumption is set to double by the end of the century.  Some say it will triple.  And if we attempt to supply that energy with fossil fuels, the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere will be enormous.  The world therefore has a two-fold problem: where will this new energy come from, and how can it be carbon-free?  Availability of sufficient environmentally friendly energy sources to meet the needs of a rapidly growing and developing world population may be the most pressing problem our civilization has ever faced.

Current technologies cannot meet this challenge, and incremental improvements in these technologies will not suffice.  We need transformational discoveries, leading to what I call disruptive technologies--technologies that fundamentally change the rules of the game--and that means we need fundamental breakthroughs.

An example of transformational discoveries can be found here at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the Center for Functional Nanomaterials.  This is one of five Nanoscale Science Research Centers established by DOE's Office of Science that are helping to position the United States as the global leader of the nanotechnology revolution, perhaps the most promising technological revolution of our era. The Center for Functional Nanomaterials is developing the scientific foundation and tools for the design and creation of functional nanomaterials toward an atomic level view of reactivity in nanocatalysts; bio-inspired assemblies of hybrid systems for energy manipulation; tailored nanomaterials for solar energy conversion and storage devices; and non-noble metal fuel cell catalysts.
           
Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers, or 10 to 1,000 Angstroms.  In terms of atomic dimensions, it is 3 to 300 atoms in length.  Nanotechnology is not just another step towards miniaturization. There are fundamental differences in physical, chemical, and biological behavior at this level to make it significantly different from bulk materials or individual atoms and molecules. Nanotechnology involves imaging, measuring, modeling, and manipulating matter at this length scale. The Brookhaven Center for Functional Nanomaterials provides unique intellectual and technical capabilities to address such challenges. Located here in Long Island, it will catalyze the development of new kinds of high-tech enterprises that will have significant implications for the regional economy.

An example where nanotechnology has great promise is solar energy in general, and solar cells in particular.  The huge gap between our present use of solar energy and its enormous undeveloped potential defines a grand challenge in energy research.  Sunlight is a compelling solution to our need for clean, abundant sources of energy in the future.  It is readily available, secure from geopolitical tension, and poses no threat to our environment through pollution, or to our climate through greenhouse gases. 

The challenge in converting sunlight to electricity via photovoltaic solar cells is to dramatically reduce the cost per watt of delivered solar electricity.  We must reduce the cost per watt by about a factor of 5 to 10 to compete with electricity as it is generated today from our present mix of coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy plants. 

New materials to efficiently absorb sunlight, new techniques to harness the full spectrum of wavelengths in solar radiation, and new approaches based on nanostructured architectures can revolutionize the technology used to produce solar electricity.  These include:  (1) remarkable recent advances in the fabrication of nanoscale architectures by novel top-down and bottom-up techniques; (2) advances in nanoscale characterization using electron, neutron, and x-ray scattering and spectroscopy; and (3) sophisticated computer simulations of electronic and molecular behavior in nanoscale semiconductor assemblies using density functional theory. 

I would add a word here about the synergy between our nanoscience centers and the powerful capabilities the Office of Science has in place and is in the process of developing for the imaging of matter at the nanoscale.  We have deliberately sited our five nanoscience centers near existing or emerging world-class DOE facilities for X-ray, neutron or electron scattering--including those at Argonne, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley, and Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, as well as at Brookhaven.  Here at Brookhaven we are in the process of preparing to deploy a truly remarkable new light source as a successor to the widely used National Synchrotron Light Source, or NSLS, located here at the laboratory.  This successor facility, the NSLS-II, will provide a major upgrade over the NSLS’s current capabilities, delivering 10,000 times the brightness and nanometer-scale resolution and an energy resolution of 0.1 millielectron volt.  It will be the first light source that combines nanometer spatial resolution with high brightness, coherence, and beam stability.  It will enable routine nanometer-scale characterization of materials, with powerful applications to biotechnology, nanotechnology, and the study of materials under extreme conditions.  Just this past month, the Department of Energy approved a major milestone toward the construction of NSLS-II--what we call Critical Decision-1--and the facility is on track to begin construction in 2009.  When it is completed--expected in 2015--it will provide a world-leading tool to amplify the capabilities of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials.

Such tools, enabling major advances in the basic science of solar electric conversion, coupled with the new semiconductor materials now available, could drive a revolution in the way that solar cells are conceived, designed, implemented, and manufactured. 

The science and technology areas in which nanoscience is expected to have the greatest impact are:

   • Scalable methods to split water with sunlight for hydrogen      production 
   • Highly selective catalysts for clean and energy-efficient      manufacturing 
   • Solid-state lighting at 50 percent of the present power      consumption 
   • Super-strong, light-weight materials to improve efficiency         of cars, airplanes, etc. 
   • Reversible hydrogen storage materials operating at ambient      temperatures 
   • Power transmission lines capable of 1 gigawatt transmission 
   • Low-cost fuel cells, batteries, thermoelectrics, and
     ultra-capacitors built from nanostructured materials 
   • Materials synthesis and energy harvesting based on the      efficient and selective mechanisms of biology 

So nanoscience promises to make major contributions to our energy security.  All the elementary steps of energy conversion (charge transfer, molecular rearrangement, chemical reactions) take place on the nanoscale.  Thus, the development of new nanoscale materials, as well as the methods to characterize, manipulate, and assemble them, creates an entirely new paradigm for developing new and revolutionary energy technologies. 

This is what we are about at the Department of Energy.  Transformational discoveries that will lead to disruptive technologies.  These will take place here at Brookhaven National Laboratory, on Long Island.  Your work with Congressman Israel is helping our nation.  And your nation is investing in your community to improve the economic and energy security of our country.