you're up to date of the next plan of a takes a look at the future of silicon valley. it's known for everything from computers, to solar panels, but it's reaching its limits. that's after a short break. my problem really is for me on the team here in berlin. thanks for watching. take care. the fast fashion as an environmental 9, a clothing graveyard image of land desert. this is where things wealthy industrial nations no longer need and lightest textile waste gets stranded. fashion, watch now on youtube. these do for fun, vide, do gravitational waves squeeze all bodies. how do i the drums,

but the to the feet? and what's the perfect kill for approx side? find the on says, guess with d. w. signs on the picked up channels. in 1965, an engineer predicted that we'd be able to double the processing power of computers every 2 years and he was right. since then, we've been pretty much following this trend called moore's lock. computing power has grown exponentially. plumbing the backbone of much of modern let moore's laws breaking down to make computers better. we've been filling them with more and more transistors, which are what create the ones and zeroes that make computers work. transistors have now shrunk to the size of one adam. beyond that, there's no where to go, because the laws of physics get weird, a completely different sector where we're also getting a wallace solar power. current panels can only turn around a quarter of sunlight and to energy. and we can't make them more efficient. or the

reason for both a silicon possibly the most important element of our time is the basis for nearly all that tronics. and the reason we have widespread solar power. it's also with a famous high tech california area got its name. but even though silicon has brought us this far, it can't take us any further. these things aren't getting more efficient. so why are we outgoing silicon? and what's next? this is pure silicon, but most of it naturally occurs of silicon dioxide or silica, one of the places that you'll find it is in regular old sand for solar panels and electronics. so it, because he didn't refine to over 99 percent parity because that pier, so it kind of has a particular electrical property. it's a semi conductor. so in contrast, with the conduct of like composite, conduct electricity easily or an inch lighter, like which one, conduct electricity at all, kindly catch pull, researches,

solar cell technology and integrating solar power into the grid. you need to send me conduct that way. you can control how it conducts electricity. in very simple terms, a semi conductor is like a switch. we can kind of turn the energy float on and off, even though so it kind isn't the best semi conductor. it's quite a good one. and since there's a ton of it, it's cheap for all these reasons. we've been using it for these 2 technologies for decades. 1884. so the 1st solar panel installed in, in new york city rooftop. and in the 1950s we started making them from silicon back then the panels converted around 6 percent of the sunlight and energy in were expensive since then, efficiency is gone up to around 25 percent and prices have come way down. solar is now one of the cheapest forms of energy there, it's the solar panels are made of silicon, cheated with other elements to form differently charged layers. these layers allow current to flow in one direction. we have the electronic moving electron maybe is

an electrical current, and so therefore it can, it can go out and it can complete the circuit and it can help it's just leaking solar panels. silicon and computers also has these layers. one of the places you can find the silica and layers inside the computer is a type of micro chip called the cpu or central processing unit. i'm going to see if i can find it in this one. the cpu is made up of a piece of silicon covered and tiny silicon transistors. because of those layers, transistors either allow current to flow or stop it low and current creates a one and no current creates 0. those ones and zeros from the bases for all computing. but the silver current isn't only in the cpu, it's all over the inside of this computer. basically, anything that needs to do any calculations, whether for processing or storage,

is going to be using silicon. now, tiny micro chips have billions of transistors on them. we've had to start stacking them on top of each other instead of putting them side by side. more transistors means switching from one to 0 faster, which is a computing better and better. but we can't make silicon transistors, any smaller people have reached the limitations, know that they're going to limit as of one of the size side of and then use that as a researches the production of wideband gaps and the conductors. and they're using integrated circuits. and i won't be going to be on below this, so you'd be kind of go below just didn't oh, you can make it more efficient at home and call you can make it was more instead of getting smaller transistors into switch, faster operated higher voltages to be more efficient, that's something silicon doesn't do very well. so it comes limitations are also seriously holding back how much energy we can harvest from solar power. to understand the problem, we have to go down to the sub atomic level. we can look at electrons and something

called the band, yet the band gap is a theoretical concept that can be thought of as to band. with the space in between . this space is how much energy is required to move in electron from the bottom band to the top bands for silicon. the band gap is $1.00 electron volts. so it requires 1.12 electron volts of energy to move an electron from here, up to here, where it can actually generate electricity. if more energy is applied, the electron goes past the next band, then it lose energy and comes back to extra energy, turns into heat and disperses through the material. the smaller the band gap, the more energy is lost as heat. so the con has a relatively small band gap, so it can be prone to overheating. if the electron doesn't have enough energy, it doesn't make it to the band and no electricity is generated. in solar panels, energy hits the pin on the form of sunlight. but the sun gets off many different

types of lights, so not all of them can be absorbed efficiently by silica. blue light has too much energy and infrared life as to little actually or so just these 2 facts limit the efficiency sol, sales to around 30 percent of the rent a quarter of fission. see for silicon is already 26 percent. this now band gap, also waste energy in transistors, bending over the smaller banking jo, blue, one mortgage on your visitors tools. but when electronics, i'm moving into them ready to deal with this or disagreeing, more heat. so this keep it'd be 100 percent. what it says. so do we tell tech companies to start repainting their sons? because that efficiency problem is solvable materials with wide band gaps for electronics. those include gallium nitride, graphing silicon car, ride and gallium oxides. they level transistors to use more of their energy to perform calculations. they lose less heat and can handle over 10 times the voltage

of silicon devices. they also operate at twice the maximum temperature of silica over $300.00 degrees celsius. because this by been gap, materials are already used in chargers for electric vehicles. even charges and other batteries can not be manufactured was typical. you're not able to handle almost naturally because of us know, but it also means a computer using wideband gap. semiconductors wouldn't need so much cooling, making it smaller and more energy efficient, and they require less energy to manufacture recently built and making some progress doesn't do us as a picture of video searches. so you're going to the minimum temperature required to manufacture, give us know for disposing deficiencies and materials are more expensive, which means they're not as widely available. but advances in production could change that in the near future. for solar a promising why band yet material is prostate, which can capture more of the sun's available life and silica. grey sky is a crystal structure and you can put different elements within that crystal

structure. then you can change the band gap. that means that you can absorb more of the light, making solar panel overall more efficient. and we'll be looking at what perhaps guy can do for solar power and another planet, a video really soon. but efficiency isn't the only concern. turning that san into silicon requires a lot of heat and since most of the world, so it kinda is produced in china, most of that feed comes from burning cold solar panels make up for the c o. 2 emissions for manufacturing. that's it was make wood chips which also use a lot of water. 11 of the biggest chip manufacturers in the world has already had to ration water in order to keep producing them. and when supply shocks like that hit, it affects the price after supply change or disruptive during kogan, the price of silicon shot up. that's one of the main reasons for a chip shortage that's still continuing today without so look on mike richard's production of electronics. some cars slowed down and so far there hasn't really been much recycling going on. it's easy to see why recycling solar con,

from computers is hard. when you look at the process of taking this, one of the parts, i mean just getting into it was really difficult and i didn't even pull most of the silly gone out of the components. and we're about to face a huge challenge with solar panels. most of them only work well for around 25 to 30 years. and now we're starting to see many of them nearing the end of their life. the number of use of solar panels is projected to increase to around 80000000 metric tons by 2050. so we need both new materials and more sustainable, silicon production and recycling sounds that is already on the way you legislation requires 80 percent of each solar panel to be recycled at the end of its life. the majority of panels are glass and aluminum. when they're recycled, they're basically shredded down to their components from their the silica and can be extracted and removed. so the gum or cycling is still in the early stages, but companies are already able to recycle around 90 percent of it. as of now, the silicon mostly goes to the aluminum industry which combines it with other

metals to make products. it's possible to make recycled type purity, silicon. but the purification process is expensive. energy intensive and not really economical at the moment. but the rate is on the silicon that is fueled the digital age has taken us as far as we can go. we need something else if we want electronics to keep getting better and solar panels to become more efficient. and although there's still a lot of work to do, why been get materials like prostate scale him nitride and silicon carbon? let's see the best options. what do we destroy next? let us know in the comments and don't forget to subscribe. we've got new videos every friday. cool. the

rushes will resignation on the train has raged for 2 years. 2 years of people being separated from the families and have some defend the country on the funds while

others are trying to start over in a foreign country. living either in constant danger, home sickness and then so essentially focus on human next on dw, into the conflict phone with tim sebastian. my guess this week is alexi gunter, unco ukrainian. m. p. angelica the parliamentary assembly council of your assistant for a year ago, going to ranko, had post price present lensky and reservations about him because he still believe this presidents will be due crying to victory. come success in 60 minutes on dw, the get ready for an exciting. i've been trying to look surprised. hi,

irish. and i'm ready to dive into the hands of human to you. have you have a one to start doing either from port yet please go to the spot on the on expected side to side. not just another day. so much is happening all at once. we take time to understand this is the day i'm in that's look at current use events, analyzed by experts and critical thinking is weekdays on d, w. cost about why does that? and i think a lot now i'm lisa, i'm on the the new host join us for an exciting exploration. and everything in between.

this is a video and audio production 5 d, w. i hope video will tune in the to hello and to will welcome to focus on europe is great to have you with us. this february, march the 2nd anniversary of russia's invasion of ukraine. on the 24th of february 2022, russian president, putin ordered his army to cross the crane border. but what russia thought to be a quick victory.