Imagine a world with total food security, even in the deserts! What if I say it is not far-fetched to imagine that solar energy will be negligibly cheap and right at our window, even on the days when it pours beyond bounds.
It is not a distant Sci-Fi future, in fact, Nanomaterials Scientists and Young Entrepreneurs are currently pushing the boundaries of science to address challenges in agriculture as well as in the solar energy harvesting sectors. One such technology currently displays Ronaldo’s lavish goals in realistic colors on your TV sets.
The ‘’reader’s digest’’ version on Quantum dots…
Quantum dots (QDs) are vanishingly small semiconductor particles, thousands of times smaller than a strand of human hair. They are reshaping how we use color and light today. For example, QDs partially convert blue light into green and red in Samsung TVs. They are “quantum” because one can tune the colors of light that QDs absorb and emit by changing the size of these little dots. Therefore, QDs have utility in almost every application involving light.
We can purchase lighting and HR-display products today that incorporate QDs. However, as we will learn here, traditional QDs are limited by their toxicity, high cost, and poor stability and are yet to see wide-scale applicability.
Well, this is the beginning, and UbiQD is running at the forefront, where they have solved these problems with a new class of QDs. They utilize these novel materials in an optical device called a luminescent solar concentrator, which is a simple but effective way to harvest sunlight; the company’s is aiming to first deploy in greenhouses for enhanced crop growth, but the same technology can be utilized in low-cost solar windows that will power smart cities of the future.
In conversation with Hunter McDaniel, CEO UbiQD
It was a great pleasure to sit down with Hunter McDaniel, CEO of UbiQD. This interview will be published in two parts.
In this first part, we discussed how he turned the ”DISCUSSION SECTION” from his 30+ scientific papers into an entrepreneurial reality. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
RC: Hello Hunter! I find the name of your company ‘UbiQD’ very captivating. What makes these QDs ubiquitous, and what problems are you trying to address via this innovation?
Hi Ritu! We initially pronounced the company name “U-bi-Que-Dee”, but now I usually say ‘ubiquity’ because it rolls off your tongue a little faster. UbiQD is short for ubiquitous QDs. Previous generations of QDs are not yet ready for wide-scale ‘ubiquity’ because they are limited by their toxicity, high cost, poor stability, and other optical properties.
We’ve solved those problems at UbiQD out of the gate with a new class of QDs. Materials we use are based on safe/cheap elements like copper, zinc, and sulfur, as opposed to lead and cadmium. We also have developed low-cost manufacturing processes that are inherently cheaper than previous methods. For us, the ‘killer apps’ are in agriculture and energy.
RC: What is the technology behind your ‘killer apps’?
For our applications, in agriculture and solar energy; we utilize what’s called a luminescent solar concentrator to absorb some sunlight but remain partially transparent, letting a tunable amount and color of light pass right through. The absorbed light is converted to a glow, or photoluminescence, of which most are trapped in glass or a film and then guided to the edges by total internal reflection.
In the Agriculture application; we guide the orange-red QD-light to plants to improve crop yield. In the Window application; we guide Near-infrared (NIR ) QD-light to small solar cells hidden in the frame of the window to generate electricity.
RC: How is your company moving towards sustainable and economical solutions for solar energy harvesting using the solar-windows?
Our solar window solution is inherently a carbon-free source of energy, so let’s assume its sustainable. The harder, more critical goal is to develop an economical solution, and the figure of merit is return on investment, or ROI. The ROI is simply the ratio of technology cost to performance (dollar value of electricity production) and tells you the payback time for the end user.
For typical rooftop solar systems in the US, today its about 7 years, which is pretty good for an asset that has 25+ years of useful life. Utility-scale solar is faster, more like 4 or 5 years. In our models of performance and cost, the estimated ROI for the product is similar to utility-scale solar at around 4 years.
As we work towards that goal and beyond, we are focusing on improving performance and reducing costs. To keep costs down, we are developing ‘drop-in’ solutions that fit within existing value changes. That means our quantum dots should go into typical windows, without much modification. It should be easy for the window manufacturer and installer to utilize our quantum dot tech.
We are always working on improving solar window efficiency, but are close to our goals. We also can effectively boost performance by targeting urban settings, where the price of electricity is high. When you put it all together, the ROI is already looking good for our tech, but it will gradually fall over time with scale and innovation.
RC: What is the potential market size for your product today? What is its growth rate? How did you estimate this?
Our materials have applicability in many industries, and if you tried to size them all up, you could easily come up with 100’s of billions of dollars. We are selling R&D materials into some off-focus markets like healthcare and have partnerships in other off-focus markets like anti-counterfeit security inks, and we are very excited about the potential in big long-term markets like solar windows. They all have different addressable market sizes and growth rates.
Our primary focus right now is on agriculture. We rely on market research reports that are sometimes validated by industry stakeholders we have talked to. The Agriculture film is about a $8B industry growing at about 5% per year, and roughly 40% of that is optical films. Greenhouses are about a $21B global industry growing at about 10% per year. Horticultural lighting is a competing approach, at about $4B market size with LED growing at 25-50% CAGR.
We do take these estimates with a grain of salt, but they are probably somewhere in the ballpark.
RC: Going bit back to your academic life., can you elaborate a bit on your educational profile for our readers?
I double majored in Physics and Electrical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, graduating in 2006. I went for the dual degrees because I really love the intersection of physics and EE and I love Santa Barbara as well. There I developed a passion for Materials science while working on quantum computers as an undergrad researcher for Prof. John Martinis. After that, I earned a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2011 under Prof. Moonsub Shim. That’s when I began working on quantum dots (QDs).
After studying in Illinois, I went to Los Alamos National Laboratory for a postdoc in Chemistry with a pioneer in quantum dot spectroscopy, Dr. Victor Klimov. It was there that the foundation for UbiQD was established and I formed the company in 2014.
RC: Did the rigor of the academic training complement your current responsibilities?
Yes, through and through!!
It was really all of the academic presentations and publications that gave me the soft skills that I use every day to pitch UbiQD. Scientists might not see it this way, but they are in sales. Ask any professor, they usually feel like they are salespersons. They have to sell their ideas to the funding agency, collaborators, family, and academic peers who review and/or cite their work.
Nowadays, I am selling UbiQD to investors, partners, and potential employees. Partners love it when I can ‘get into the weeds’ with them on the technical details of our technology. I don’t lead with technical details, ever, but there’s a lot of depth behind my flashy sales side that helps when I’m in the ‘shark tank’.
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It was really all of the academic presentations and publications that gave me the soft skills that I use every day to pitch UbiQD
RC: When during your academic career the idea of a startup began to haunt you?
It was always there in the back of my head, but I didn’t say, ‘Hey, I’m going to start a company’ until probably a few weeks before I started UbiQD near the end of my postdoc. So maybe you could say I was haunted at the end of my postdoc, during the time after I realized I could start a company, but before I actually founded the company on paper.
I always wanted to have an impact and leaned towards applied science, but it simply never occurred to me that I could actually start one myself.
The aha moment occurred around the time I was doing faculty job interviews when I realized that I probably wouldn’t be happy as a professor, even if I could beat the faculty job application gauntlet.
RC: Starting a company, after spending a couple of years inside the ‘ivory tower,’ must have been challenging
Yes, it was a rude awakening to have to pay for yourself after being supported by others’ funding all of those years. Not only could I not pay myself, but I couldn’t pay for much else either. To make matters worse, I was all alone after being part of large R&D teams for so many years.
It was the harsh reality of being a solo founder entrepreneur. Many will say that you should maximize your number of co-founders, there are some good reasons for that. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an obvious viable co-founder for UbiQD, but I consider my first investor’s co-founders.
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Yes, it was a rude awakening to have to pay for yourself after being supported by others’ funding all of those years
RC: Can you narrate a story from your academic research days which formed the foundation of your company?
I was working on applied research at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a postdoc in close collaboration with Sharp Corporation. They were funding us to develop a novel kind of solar technology, called a sensitized solar cell. Before I joined the team, they had made excellent progress using cadmium and lead-based materials, but the toxicity of those materials was a non-starter for commercialization.
So my job was to explore alternatives, and we decided to expand on work started previously in the group on CuInS2-based QDs. We figured out how to make that material relevant for solar and ended up with a record efficiency certified solar cell (for that kind of device). We also fleshed out several other exciting applications, including solar windows, and improved the manufacturing process a lot.
However, then Sharp fell upon hard times, mainly due to the strength of the Japanese Yen, which made their products uncompetitive in the global market. Back then Sharp and Sony TV’s were the best. So Sharp abandoned the project and technology and ultimately sold it in a fire sale to a Taiwanese company. I was pretty disappointed at the time, like all of that hard work had been for nothing.
However, I have realized that a faculty job wasn’t for me, nor was another postdoc and convinced myself that I could start a company. Since I was not allowed to negotiate a license with Los Alamos while still employed, I immediately took an exclusive license to earlier prior art from M.I.T., with cash out of my own pocket (the first seed money).
Once I had fully separated from Los Alamos Labs and had the M.I.T. license in hand, I was able to secure a license to technology developed at the Los Alamos National Lab. The New Mexico Consortium then gave me an office and lab space in exchange for equity, and a year later I was able to hire our second employee Dr. Matt Bergren, whom I knew from academic collaborations, and he is now our Chief of Product.
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However, I have realized that a faculty job wasn’t for me, nor was another postdoc and convinced myself that I could start a company. Since I was not allowed to negotiate a license with Los Alamos while still employed, I immediately took an exclusive license to earlier prior art from M.I.T., with cash out of my own pocket
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Talking to him allowed me to reflect upon the challenges faced by the Scientist turned CEO, and how he circumvented them successfully. I am sure our budding entrepreneurs reading this interview will have a take-home message. The second part will be published soon, so watch out this space for more.
The ClubSciWri Team
Author
Rituparna Chakrabarti is the Editor-in-Chief at CSW. She pursued her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Georg-August University (Göttingen, Germany) and is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Biostructural Imaging of Neurodegeneration (BIN), Göttingen. For her, the interface of Science and art is THE PLACE to be! To unwind herself she plays mandolin and eagerly looks for a corner at a coffee house to slide herself in with a good read or company. Follow her on Twitter.
Editor
Roopsha Sengupta did her Ph.D. in the Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna and postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge UK, specializing in the field of Epigenetics. Besides science and words, she enjoys spending time with children and painting.
Illustrators
Disha Chauhan did her Ph.D. in IRBLLEIDA, University of Lleida, Spain in Molecular and Developmental Neurobiology. She has post-doctoral experience in Cell Biology of Neurodegenerative diseases and is actively seeking a challenging research position in academia/industry. Apart from Developmental Neurobiology, she is also interested in Oncology. She is passionate about visual art (Illustration, painting, and photography) and storytelling through it. She enjoys reading, traveling, hiking and is also dedicated to raising scientific awareness about Cancer. Follow her on Instagram.
Saurabh Gayali recently completed his Ph.D. in Plant Molecular Biology from National Institute of Plant Genome Research (JNU), New Delhi. Currently he is DBT RA at IGIB (New Delhi) and his research focuses on finding binding associations of Indian plant metabolites with human pathogen proteins, creating a platform for future plant extract based drug discovery. He has a keen interest in data analysis, visualization and database management. He is a skilled 2D/3D designer with a specific interest in scientific illustration. In leisure, Saurabh plays guitar and compose music, does photography or practice programming. Follow him on Instagram.
Blog design and interview: Rituparna Chakrabarti
Inset prhotograph provided by Hunter McDaniel
Acknowledgment: Renee Shenton from Breakout Labs, and Ananda Ghosh from Club SciWri
Connect with UbiQD on Twitter and LinkedIn
The contents of Club SciWri are the copyright of PhD Career Support Group for STEM PhDs (A US Non-Profit 501(c)3, PhDCSG is an initiative of the alumni of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The primary aim of this group is to build a NETWORK among scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs).
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