so there were weeks made headlines not fewer not as a meteoric default crisis hurtles towards america or make less than forty eight hours on its mission before the impact was felt for a while washington's the biggest lender china decides to wrestle jeopardised world of. polish probe reluctantly colleges part of their of course last year's presidential plane crash in western russia and it concerns politics played

a pivotal role in a also based investigation. turns are of spring turns into israeli summer tens of thousands flood streets and squares of major israeli cities to money minister benjamin netanyahu undertakes urgent economic reforms. but next a technology update looking at energy conservation and it is about events in the high tech world. history. hello and welcome to technology update are you tired of paying those overblown electric bills at the end of each month this could be the answer you've been waiting for a lot of the energy and with it a lot of the harder in cash gets burned by crummy old incandescent light bulbs but what if i could get you

a lot more light and waste way less water in the process and up and coming russian companies just open a huge new production facility to help make that energy efficient dream a reality. doesn't need my sleazy sales fish the high tech brainchild of a trio of russian scientists was born abroad and is now returned to russia to cover it in on a shining factory at the outskirts of st petersburg aside from being a happy homecoming assembly line launches a big step in russia's attempts to modernize its economy to go green at the same time. the capacity. is the highest. in russia countries and eastern europe we can produce today through. the month. it's the. three hundred seventy five. illegally is the latest in

a long line russians big and powerful made some of the first strides in constructing the incandescent lamps in the eighty's seventy's using carbon filaments renowned american inventor thomas edison introduced improved filaments and extended relatively short life of electric bulbs first to forty then to over one thousand hours by the early twentieth century they tungsten filament light bulbs still in use today were already emerging in lamps appeared in the thirty's and lamps at the end of the one nine hundred fifty s. and high pressure sodium street lighting in the sixty's compact fluorescents or c.f.l. were pioneers in the seventy's and are still a popular option as we move towards energy efficiency gallium nitride light emitting diodes made the scene in the ninety's with improvements nearly the technology since then showing incredible flexibility and efficiency quite possibly making l.e.d. the light of the future. it was that break you tradition brought out the big shots the octagon factory opening the governor of st petersburg clearly understood the

positive impact of having the company on her and she was joined by top level dignitaries and investors from moscow and beyond it's a project of state high tech corporation is happy to throw its weight behind. this is one hundred. from the ground up on the fundamental level we can thank for his scientific contribution he won the nobel prize for his research in the field of hatred structures. that have been produced here. in fact there is one st petersburg academy at the root of all of this the you know few physical technical institute it's been a world class center for fundamental physics and cutting edge technology since the days of its founder of. not only did he in the faculty of kaliningrad would soon. there is named train the ranks of the soviet union stop nuclear scientists they also began work on semiconductors that underpins virtually all modern electronics.

was one of the institute's bright stars in the field of semiconductor physics and a forefather of today's l.e.d.s. . semiconductor along to meeting diets were developed as early as nine hundred twenty s. russian scientists. experimented with silicon combine. the end of the night in sixty's we saw the appearance of d.s. based on a three d. find semiconductor hit restrictions that was in late one nine hundred sixty s. and early one nine hundred seventy s. it was acknowledging implemented these facilities is the next generation know how developed by my students and what we see here demonstrates how fast this area is changing both in scientific and technological terms and also in terms of the top rate equipments are operating here. to go on top managers maxime know beautifully to slow growth and alex a coach were all of your of students in the same mid ninety's graduate class and while the op electronics department of goofy institute gave them the best of

foundations they were completing their studies at a time of difficult transition for the russian scientific community. at the beginning of the nineteen ninety's our economy faced a dramatic arc evil due to disastrous reforms implemented by the government i mean they were carried out in a callous way and as a result russian science found itself in a difficult situation we could not have survived could not have maintained our scientific potential without international collaboration. two guns founders were part of a global generation of innovative entrepreneurs seeking elusive start of conditions in an era of uncertainty in fact much of the developed world was suffering an economic identity crisis in the late twentieth century. not just in the collapsing socialist bloc the west german city of dortmund where the russian innovators eventually founder incubate was no exception. the world is full of rusting old

industrial space fallen by the wayside and the constant shifts of the global economy the challenge on everyone's minds is to rethink and rebuild these spaces to compete in the high tech twenty first century. these challenges were particularly acute endured more a city at the heart of the once mighty male logical complex and europe's largest economy these pictures are from the final days of phoenix west a massive plant operated by the steel giant crude that along with other heavy industry installations was the lifeblood of the city's well established working class long before the mill was shuttered for good in one thousand nine hundred eight the economic outlook and was darkening. as lot. of people suffered from the crisis a lot of working places. they had to take a decision here what to do for the future what to do next. and decided to

focus on high technology. that was the decision and the result of this decision you can see here so. by the way. woods inside is an impressive new facility a far cry from the dreary dortmund of years past when doors opened in april two thousand and five. factories set up as a competent center for micro and nanotechnology startups with offices laboratory and clean room infrastructure for small companies trying to take technology from ideas to products the facility combines funding from the city state and european union now hosting around twenty companies with over one hundred employees. including many from russia so really what you see here in the by word is basically the essence of eight years of experience all rick perry did with the russian friends rough night it's not us. who go the route in technology that needs to have

access to global markets opus the there's a gap in between and the moment this rush might pick teams to push for infrastructure in order to do the conversion of that technology into products where is the money to make a reality come from well basically it needs investors right but you know to get them this infrastructure in a high tech start up to him to make a predictable conversion you have a clear timeframe both to the three years in order to convert technology to products and prepare the company in order to approach global markets that's exactly the kind of preparation. and his classmates turned business partners in octagon were looking for when they came to dortmund and ensure better to help them take tough quality off electronic technology to the market. up the gun originally was founded by. two my friends and classmates from university and myself

and they don't care if my or he joined us and he helped to move here to darkman place the solution is consultant made the company i mean it was he important through this time to develop the main principles and basically team to the final product we created that elegant the day we are between ten top companies on the level of performance so what exactly was it that opera guy needed to get their business off the ground insured equipment limiting diodes don't grow on trees growing every taxi all reactors are able to read top quality equipment at affordable rates and the m.s.t. factory in jordan the octagon team could set about generating a top quality sample that made them an attractive investment to set up a full scale production here's how it's done. l.e.d. production starts with have been mana crystalise sapphire wafer and a process known as epigenetics you'll grow placed inside a special chamber away from his bombarded with various gases to form

a multi-layered structure under specific pressure and temperature conditions the gases cause chemical reactions leaving layers of gallium nitride indium nitride and aluminum nitride on the wafer surface each wafer will produce up to thousands of l.e.d.s. so a laser edging process cards out the individual chips contacts are then if fixed each one of the tiny l.e.d. ships are now ready to be placed inside even casement are connected with gold wire the context and covered with a foster layer to convert blue to white light negative and positive charge currents meet in the active layer of the diode releasing photons in the form of visible light. technology energy efficiency or both like really. we're recovering the innovation technologies and we look to russia and we've talked to several groups of friends and several financial groups and on that same group

and michael crocker they will like much faster than others and they realize the potential of the company and they simply want it now main expertise the main core. and inside of these protection. we found a way that we can grow with least dislocations and defects to even. meaning that we can build chips was a more cost efficient technology delivering the same level of performance we are in a transition phase from pilot minutes hectoring who have here in germany. trying to establish an today in russia to gun is now busy calibrating their production lines in st petersburg to perfectly recreate the recipe day nailed down in dortmund it's a tedious process even on the prototype scale and now the expectations are far higher comes out of these machines is going not to showcase for potential investors but to meet the lighting needs of clients so if all goes to plan what advantages

can there l.b.s. offer for an equivalent amount of light octagon projects its. last see if l's nearly ten fold in incandescents by fifty times meanwhile the l.e.d.s. will cut in half the energy usage of most c.f.l. zz and usefully ten times less like tricity then old school bulbs mercury pollution is a potentially serious problem with energy saving c.f.l. l.e.d.s. avoid that toxic threat elegies completely and environmentally safe in russia from next year from. a band four hundred watt incandescent bulbs like other people as well. but in russia there is no such high penetration of those so we see that in terms of the market size. directly placing incandescent bulbs. it's bigger. so that's why in this sense we expect russian market to grow even faster and we think we see the growth of the market for thirty straight like in russia

from seventy to one hundred percent a year and we expect the standard thing to continue to talk to go and doesn't have to look too far for customers as the city of st petersburg is undergoing an l.e.d. overhaul. our company is in charge of maintaining some one hundred eighty thousand lighting elements around the city that's a huge market for the new. currently power consumption total several megawatts the opening of a major production plant that will produce and hopefully lights too will be a boost for some pages the documentary initially we intend to use days to eliminate the city's gardens and pocks there's also an ambitious new simple construction plan in the pipeline with new streets to be designed and built in two thousand and twelve twenty thirteen. so after we've done the box we'll extend the replacement program to residential districts and then move on to revamp the lighting for major transport arteries in the city as well as the embankments and other case sites

beyond their hometown octagon is branching out to the far away russian republic of straddling the arctic circle in an icy northern siberia energy efficiency is more than a slogan they're producing electricity and much of the region is expensive and heavily subsidized they also need new technology built to withstand their long brutal winter. what have you guys done to make l.e.d.s. still work in temperature conditions like we have a lot of parts of russia it was one of the challenges vision mad it was when we came to this market and became vertically integrated we understood russia is a very cold country and nowhere. there is a standard if you need minus sixty degree or what i want for you to throw nice we should use of your devices so we know. have developed a lot of special electronics cost effective for the client. and this is a prototype here what's different about it i can't tell with the naked eye but tell me a little bit about the technology i would say that right now you can buy minus sixty

degree ruminated about the extremely expensive so it's not like a commodity product in the market what we have today and those i am proud of smoke i'm more used to new company hands. on solar so quite a lot it's totally new to us design is definitely a big part of the heavily competitive game since other companies outside of russia have already been on the market for years octagon has to show the ability to meet customer specific demands like the temperature standards and it's all about better lighting solutions ever lower costs definitely it's like more economical light you pay less after you put your lamp in you get your payback period today it's still quite high from two to five six years the occasion but in four years look peter it will be like. one here compared to like and it means that the truth accessible for

. population for now that kind of mass scale consumer base is a bit beyond our grasp even if you think this land or street in industrial lighting would be great for your garage you might balk when you saw the three hundred dollars price tag so well octagon works on driving down the cost of chip production somebody needs to tackle the issue of cold design before i'm sold on switching over to. the fortunately the creative minds of hard lead bit of studios are already on the case my scales his design squad is constantly coming up with new ways to merge hi tech function with the fashionable for their blueprints or behind a futuristic prototype octagon screw in l e d. y. was the mean challenge that you guys had to overcome in making the slams obviously edited knowledge is quite advanced now but it's still got some issues to solve the biggest one ease the problem of couldn't don't because it's pretty use the laws of

heat so we have to design the very good. read into it is that what this thing is right here yeah it's like. the theme we just came out for the market maybe three years of age is the standard solution but we like to change it and make it more effective and we got inspired by nature because if you look at some of the stuff like mushrooms for example they're there they just like cause a new wave in up and go in and we create the same the same similar stuff here and this will help us to extend their capacity and space around and. to make that cooling process more effective from a purely design perspective from an artistic perspective do you like working with bulbs that need a radiator this clunky like when i look at this i see mostly radiator very little ball and you don't get like maybe as much coming down this direction are you looking at ways to completely redo l.e.d.

lighting so that you don't have to have such a bulky radiator industry itself is very rapidly changing day by day i think maybe even after one year we'll have another design beefed up saluted different look so what then is the future of this kind of design to look like you mentioned their deeds self getting smaller and smaller and for example they can a bit need to acknowledge it which is called slide engine and physically it's a very very tiny ensley thin element and they implement them there but you know become an added the you could create any shape whatever you want really looking forward to some of the designs may seem a bit frivolous a first glimpse but we're talking about a far more flexible lighting future where we can. ditch traditional shapes in the name of variety add a bit of color to just about anything and replace old school single function buttons with tiny l.e.d. screens multiplying the devices possibilities another arena for l.e.d.s.

allocation is in the automobile lighting and they will be a hybrid by russian billionaire this month is literally hoping to reinvent the wheel set for full scale production sometime in two thousand and twelve the economy cars are trimmed with all the latest gadgets for the urban commuter could have said nixon who backs both octagon in a new car company so it's no wonder he understood the advantages of that product from st peter's little interest to you first of all the use of lights in the same diets helps is to come pack in some shape or competitor dition elapsed and secondly no less important they stand in lifespan basically running as long as you're. going to also the use of l e d's allowed us to simplify the calls upticks lowering costs by saving in hard decision features. to move the zero has company here as the world's leading luxury sports car makers head seen the light about l e v lance in recent years as well as the bang for the buck gets better you can expect to

encounter more l.e.d.s. on the road. as you can see l.e.d. technology is finding applications everywhere these days even letting you light up your own living room but it's just the tip of the op electronics iceberg back in the dorm an incubator there are more innovations on the way from the same team of st petersburg scientists upstairs from octagons launching pad to misty factory i don't offices of the russian companies. while their classmates and former colleagues find their niche in the well known l.e.d. industry in a human being even deeper into their scientific work on semiconductor physics they've assembled an international team to become one of the world's leaders in laser diode technology endured when they've set up the complete production cycle beginning here with molecular beam epa taxi and. finishing with a range of packaged products their output includes laser chips and fiber coupled laser modules for use in industrial medical and communications technology. thousand

and three a team of eight young researchers from the physical technical university where we worked in the laboratory of the nobel laureates to wrestle fear of go to a unique opportunity to set up a private company here in germany we managed to secure significant funds from investors and set up this semiconductor factory now we are a successful company which among other applications produces millions of chips for the medical sector chips that help save human lives but also our enterprise has some ongoing research to create a unique chip to be used in the industry of optical computer interconnections. certainly russia is a different place now with the establishment of the wrist on a corporation. submitted a project to roost with a proposal to set up production facilities back home. i think through the through make chips using our technology which will be something unique for russia. to take knology live should says referring to is called quantum dot lasers and

arena where his company is among the global elite quantum dots are confined semiconductor nanocrystals with unique electronic an optical properties first discovered in the one nine hundred eighty s. by russian physicist i see quantum dots for great advantages in laser applications . conductor hetero structures like quantum wells are harder to control for lasers quantum lasers require less current for more airplay and has tested them extremely low relative noise these properties have long been theorized their benefits are on the verge of realize they should. on the bases of a company's latest invention will be able to make a chip that will transmit many channels through its. move on one hundred gigabits. it will help replace the boat key bunches of cables that you see everywhere today just a few fibers. concussed energy consumption several dozen times in the maintenance

costs hundred times so if. you think of it this way all the data coming out of your computer gets on a highway today the options are basically either building a new road here another cable or waiting in traffic with the other data. home laser proposes adding lanes to the same highway sending information on the same fiber using several different non-interfering wavelengths add to that the fact that each plane is flying at autobahn speed and you see what kind of breakthrough we're talking about multiply that by the scale of data info heavy termite google facebook or amazon and you're redefining the world of cloud computing. one hundred data centers being set up every year around the world these are enormous factories for data processing consuming a huge amount of energy. in two thousand and six the data processing industry two percent of electric energy production in the united states that's

a huge number so she expects to revolutionize the optical interconnects industry in the near future with research and development and production sites in germany the united states and russia. so obviously the right conditions for a top russian optoelectronics technologies to develop have been set up in. two competitive firms with cutting edge projects are already on the market and possibly more on the way they build successful innovative business abroad and now want to bring them home but what's the magic formula and misty factory is built on a model that's worked in high tech development in production clusters all over the world from the famous silicon valley to taiwan in southeast asia so when. well the time come to build up this kind of center in russia the resoundingly answer from moscow right now that's the idea at the heart of the skolkovo project an international city of science and technology set to fan out over the next decade in

all directions from this spot just outside of moscow so the next time technology update brings you a high tech success story it might just be born and raised right here in still then enjoy the right. i hope that skolkovo confident he's going to cover these pork to take scientific groups with aidid hers to give them kind of in kuwait or conditions like we got it in a mist factory which we discussed with you when we were there and set up a small manufacturing in order to develop your sample or your prototype and get custom traction and this has to be done in russia immediately otherwise we would never you know cross the bridge between science and manufacturing would be because between science and coordinate affection there is a huge gap there is a development and scientist i myself am a scientist they very often they don't understand how huge is this got.

last time the close of team was in the cool gum region where men flock from all over the world to have a few centimeters to their self-confidence. this time are to go to the un more reaching. for the gold rush still gets people hyksos. or an ancient tribe likes to save its culture. where cranes are protected in the first and dumped on official nature reserve. to the original. bush a close up of archie. the fifty six. ft.

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