Report from MCALC IV - Cryocooler Meeting

Cryocoolers Users and Suppliers Meet in San Diego for a Fourth Industry Assessment Workshop – MCALC IV

by Dayrl Treger

A two-day industry meeting on Military and Commercial Applications for Low-cost Cryocoolers (MCALC) was held in San Diego, CA on November 20th and 21st, 2003. The meeting was sponsored by Strategic Analysis, Inc. (http://www.sainc.com) in cooperation with DARPA, the Army Night Vision Labs (NVESD), and Dr. Martin Nisenoff of Nisenoff and Associates (retired NRL). Attendees included representatives from the U.S. and foreign cooler vendors, users, and integrators, with presentations discussing their cryocooler needs and programs. The continuing objective of this workshop is to perform an industry assessment on the current status of low cost, highly reliable cryocoolers and to estimate the current and perceived needs of the cooled electronic communities. Emphasis is focused on low cost cryocoolers operating in the temperature ranges below 232 K (- 40 C) with attention to the requirements of the user communities on reliability, efficiency, temperature stability, EMI, vibration, audible noise, etc.

During the workshop, there was a series of presentations from the user communities (such as IR cameras, cooling of semiconductor devices and chips, cellular base stations, satellite applications, medical applications, and high temperature superconductivity) outlining their projection of cryocoolers needed for present and future generation of equipment, and presentations from a variety of cryocooler vendors outlining what is currently available. MCALC IV also had additional presentations from some key low-temperature applications and cryocooler companies (down to 4K). The twenty-three invited speaker presentations included twelve cryocooler manufacturers, ten users, and one discussion of the Cryocooler Database sponsored by the University of Twente. There was also exhibitor space available for cryocoolers vendors to display their products, brochures and technical data.

Of particular interest to the thermoelectrics community were presentations from Clemson University and RTI, discussing the latest state-of-the-art in cooling. Also of note is a presentation from INTEL, discussing the power dissipation requirements on future generations of semiconductor devices; this is an application area that thermoelectrics may have some solutions for with respect to spot cooling.

The Proceedings from MCALC IV is now available on CD. To view the conference agenda, to find out more information on the MCALC IV Conference, to express interest in MCALC V, to have your name added to the MCALC contact list, or to purchase a Proceedings CD, please visit http://www.sainc.com/MCALC4.