Keeping buildings cool in the United States uses about 8.5 quads of energy per year—put in more accessible terms, that’s about the same amount of energy contained in 293 thousand megawatts of electricity or eight billion gallons of gasoline. Air conditioning for buildings is a major expense and generates enormous quantities of greenhouse gases.
Ailan Cheng’s Nascent Devices LLC is developing new technologies aimed at replacing traditional vapor compression refrigerators and air conditioners by tapping into the amazing properties of polymeric (plastic) films that cause them to rapidly change temperature when subjected to an electric current. This unique property is known as gigantic electrocaloric effect. If Nascent can harness this gigantic opportunity, future generations may enjoy cleaner, less expensive cooling systems.
As Dr. Cheng explains, “It is a material that when you apply an electrical field, the polar molecules line up. Dipoles align in the same direction and the whole system is ordered and the entropy is lowered. If you remove the electric field, entropy increases. So, this is a heat exchange and temperature change material.”
Heat exchange is readily accomplished with existing technologies; one major problem to be solved is that conventional systems use chemicals that contribute greenhouse gases into the environment and actually consume energy in doing their work. Nascent’s materials themselves do not consume energy and therefore should save money and reduce the environmental impact of cooling systems.
As its name suggests, the company is in its infancy. However, its technology platform, which has been developed in the laboratories of Penn State Distinguished Professor Qiming Zhang, has been developed by Cheng and her colleagues over the past several years and is related to other commercially inventive work Zhang’s team is commercializing through his Penn State start-up company Novasentis.
Novasentis has raised tens of millions of investment capital to date to explore the haptic—or touch—effects of changes in similar polymers so that a device like a watch, for example, might tap its wearer to alert them of an appointment. Nascent’s work is in earlier stages, which makes a lab in Innovation Park’s incubator an excellent starting place.
Being able to tap into Innovation Park’s multiple re¬sources with the goal to grow Nascent Devices was a big part of the appeal. “The Park was naturally our first choice,” Cheng says. “Part of the reason for that is that we know that Innovation Park provides a lot of opportunities to work with the Ben Franklin (Technology Partners) and also Penn State’s Small Business Development Center and the intellectual property (Office of Technology Management) offices.”
While there’s still plenty of work to be done, Cheng sees progress each day in Nascent Device’s research suite. The company is looking to expand, and is currently looking to hire additional technical staff, an effort being supported by taking advantage of the Park’s network.
“Honestly, our technology is still in an early stage,” Cheng says. “I don’t think we can roll out some¬thing like a product to the market very soon. But we are actually developing prototypes right now. We hope we’ll have a prototype within a year from now.”
Novasentis and its young relative Nascent Devices are two hot incubator companies based on Penn State materials research—small wonder PSU ranks number one in this field.