The Life of the Solar Pioneer Karl Wolfgang Böer: Opportunities Challenges Obligations

By Karl W Böer

The Life of the Solar Pioneer Karl Wolfgang Böer is the most comprehensive

Autobiography of a world-renowned Scientist and Engineer who has been at the

forefront of the development of solar energy throughout his life. He has been

instrumental to show the direction solar energy conversion must go to become the

key ele

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: Oct 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781947938908

Karl W Böer

The Author is a world-renowned scientist, engineer and pioneer in Solar Energy, distinguished professor of Physics and Solar Energy of the University of Delaware, emeritus., fellow, AAAS, APS, ASES, IEEE. Author of 385 Journal articles and dozens of books in Semiconductor Science and Solar Energy, recent author of the theory of the new solar cell that does not use a pnjunction to separate the electrons from the holes that sunlight creates, but a thin layer of cadmium sulfide attached to the solar cell. He designed the Solar One House of the University of Delaware, the first systems house that has hybrid solar panels included in the roof-structure that convert sunlight into electric energy and heat and uses load leveling that is essential for power utilities to even out the fluctuating solar energy.

Book preview

cover.jpg

The Life of the

Solar Pioneer

KARL WOLFGANG BÖER

Opportunities Challenges, Obligations

KARL W. BÖER

with assistance of

ESTHER RIEHL

Copyright © 2017 by Karl W. Böer.

HARDBACK: 978-1-947938-89-2

PAPERBACK: 978-1-947938-88-5

EBOOK: 978-1-947938-90-8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Ordering Information:

For orders and inquiries, please contact:

1-888-375-9818

www.toplinkpublishing.com

[e-mail]

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

The Authors Note

Preface

Introduction, The rise of a prominent scientist

1. Growing up in Berlin

1.1 Roots

1.2 Lessons learned at Home

1.3 Family Time

1.4 Still more Lessons learned

1.5 The Young Scientist

1.6 Radios also captured young Wolfgang’s Interest

1.7 High School Years

1.7.1 The first three Years

1.7.2 Middle and upper Classes

1.7.3 Social activities at school

2. The War

2.1 Preparing for the War

2.2 Daily Life during Wartime

2.3 Weltanschauung

2.4 Learning to be a Pilot

2.5 Waiting

2.6 The young Soldier

2.7 Letters from Home

2.8 A difficult Decision

2.9 A long Journey

3. Recovering

3.1 Picking up the Pieces

3.2 Improvising in Berlin

3.3 Living with his Uncle

3.4 Return to the University

3.5 Starting a Family

3.6 Flying through School

3.7 Professor Robert Rompe

3.8 Better Times

3.9 Our Son

4. Doctoral Student

4.1 A Foray into Film Animation

4.2 No dumb Questions

4.3 A Crystal in a Drawer

4.4 New Challenges

4.5 Physics and Politics

4.6 Dielectric Breakdown

4.7 CdS Breakthroughs

4.8 The Group that Plays Together

4.9 No Challenge too Great

4.10 Too much Work takes its Toll

4.11 Traveling as a Way to Relax

4.12 Attention to the Family

5. Professor Böer

5.1 Creativity in the Classroom

5.2 The Great Discovery

5.3 Divorce and Marriage

5.4 The Road to Promotion

5.5 The New Journal

5.6 The Berlin Wall

5.7 Leaving Berlin

5.8 Visiting Berlin as an American Citizen

6. Anderes Land, andere Sitten

6.1 Shoes, Rent and Rooms Without Walls

6.2 The Language Barrier

6.3 Freedom?

6.4 The Streets of New York

6.5 A Different Side of America

6.6 Friends and Neighbors

6.7 Moving to Delaware

6.8 University Life

6.9 Applied Research

6.10 Returning to the Wings

6.11 More Adjustments

7. Solar Böer

7.1 Renate

7.2 Broader Horizons

7.2.1 A New Partnership

7.3 Stan Ovshinsky

7.4 Solar Energy

7.4.1 The Institute of Energy Conversion (IEC)

7.5 The Böer Children

7.5.1 Katie

7.5.2 The Foster Children

7.5.2.1 Dirk

7.5.2.2 Dora

7.5.3 The Böer Farm

7.5.4 Reinhard

7.5.5 Katie the Enterpreneur

7.6 All in the Timing

7.7 Solar One

7.8 The Böer Residence

7.9 The Solar Museum

7.10 Solar Energy Systems, Inc.

7.11 Changing Times

7.12 A Difficult Truth

7.13 One Last Try

7.14 The Dissolution of a Dream

8. New Horizons

8.1 The American Solar Energy Society

8.2 Böer as an Author

8.3 German Reunification, Berlin, 1989

8.4 Looking for the Past

8.5 Researching with Former Colleagues

8.6 Working with Renate

8.6 Celebrations

8.7 The Böers Entertaining

9. The Man within the Scientist

9.1 Travel together

9.2 Sports and Hobbies

9.3 Flying

9.4 Builder

9.5 Cadmium Sulfide, the unusual semiconductor.

10. Conclusions

10.1 University Professorships

10.2 Honors, Awards, International Acclaims

10.3 Awards

10.4 The Karl W. Böer Solar Energy Medal

10.4.1 The Awardees

10.5 Recognitions

11. The life with Cadmium Sulfide

A1. Appendix Böer’s Work

Selected Publications

Publications of others

Appendix A2

A2.1 The Future of Solar Energy

A2.2 Goals for the Future

A2.2.1 Solar Cells

A2.3 The Environmental Factors

A2.4 Other Effects of the Pollution

A2.3 Global Health Index

A3 Endnotes, Glossery

Image3549.jpg

CdS.... to Initiate Global Solar

Karl Wolfgang Böer

The Authors Note

I (E.R.) have written this book as a memoir in third person. It is based primarily on Böer’s memories and perspective, gleaned from an autobiographical manuscript he wrote in 1998, his personal and professional files at home and at the archive of the University of Delaware, and many interviews I held with him while visiting him at his homes in Pennsylvania and in Florida.

I (KWB) have edited and added sections of the book when it came to more personal responses that only can partly be described from interviews. I found it important to write myself the parts that involve the intricate feelings and emotions of my life as a scientist.

In the cooperation of two authors we could write a more descriptive memoir that is factually researched and lively as it describes my life in a more comprehensive and fascinating fashion.

Preface

CdS to Initiate global Solar

When I was named about ten years ago by a distinguished panel at an international congress a solar pioneer and heard the laudation, detailing how much I brought solar energy into the focus with the Solar One House that we built at the University of Delaware, I much appreciated the honor, however, I had to explain to my Colleagues that it was the CdS¹-based solar cell on its roof that made the concept of such a house promising for the future. It was a very thin layer of this material that converted solar energy into useful energy for the house. As part of the roof for the first time in the world it converted sunlight with the same solar cell panel into heat and electricity. It was built it into the roof, and not on top of it. And we stored the heat and electricity to the time later in the day when we needed it. Today, I know that we were about three decades ahead of ourselves, because only now such panels are commercially produced, and build-in constructions with a solar roof instead on top of plywood and shingles that are only now starting.

But even more importantly, Solar One, provided some load leveling by storing the energy when it is supplied by the sun and release it when there is less solar supply. This load leveling becomes more influential to power utilities when more solar houses are built.

Already then, Solar One was the platform for us to make CdS known worldwide. I knew this model house would be covered by the press on every continent, because it was so unusual, so advanced. I could only hope that one of these days cadmium sulfide would be one important ingredient of the solar panels on every house roof to harvest solar energy for providing us with the highest form of energy, that is with electricity.

Today, cadmium sulfide together with another layer of cadmium telluride has become a multibillion dollar industry, using CdS to improve these thin-film solar cell efficiencies from 8% to 16%. I know that my expectations were not too farfetched.

How did I get there? Quite a few years earlier, when, as a young student, I stumbled by accident in one of the drawers at the Physics Institute on a Petry dish full of cadmium sulfide platelets.

By investigating the electrical and optical properties of these crystals I earned my diploma and my PhD at the Humboldt University in Berlin. With many of my students, first in Berlin, and later, after my emigration to the United States, at the University of Delaware, we wrote over three hundred publications dealing with the results of our research on this material. As the director of the Institute of Energy Conversion and CEO of SES, Inc., I lead a large research and development group to further improve the CdS based solar cells.

Having worked all my life on the research of Cadmium Sulfide, I was always asked why CdS is such a special semiconductor that has no other similar material in comparison. Only in the last year in the quietness of our retirement home and in the loving care of my wife Renate, I could solve this puzzle:

Copper-doped CdS is the only sensitive photo-conductor that has over-linear field-quenching in the 10 kV range. When the lowest current is reached, the minimum entropy law starts to insert a small band of this low current, and increases the field to maintain current continuity, and this produces a high-field domain. From this point on, the current does no longer increase with applied voltage, but the width of the domain that is attached to the cathode, increases. When the domain covers the entire crystal between both electrodes, the conductivity turns from n-type to p-type, however, the current remains constant. No other semiconductor shows a similar behavior.

This permits a thin layer of CdS to help carrier separation when attached to any p-type solar cell that does no more need a pn-junction for separation, as we published recently in the Journal of Applied Physics.

Dr. Ester Riehl, an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Foreign Languages at the University of Delaware, was recommended to me by its director, to give me a hand in developing my life’s history. I am grateful to her, that she undertook the challenge to research my archives and interview me extensively thereby becoming so familiar with my life that she could write about it.

I would like to especially thank my wife Renate who helped me over five decades in so many facets of my life, endured extended times in which I seemed to be more married to science than to my family, always encouraging me and enabling me to move through the ups and downs in my life, always with a smile and holding my hand.

Karl Wolfgang Böer

Introduction, The rise of a prominent scientist

Ph.D., Dr. h.c, Karl W. Böer, fellow of AAAS, APS, ASES and IEEE, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Physics and Solar Energy, of the University of Delaware, holder of thirty patents, author of over three hundred sixty scientific articles, founder and first director of the University of Delaware’s Institute of Energy Conversion, former chairman of the board and chief scientist of Solar Energy Systems, and two-term president of the American Solar Energy Society, recipient of many top awards of various professional societies, has achieved it all. Highly respected by his peers and named as a solar pioneer, he was recently inducted in the worlds Solar Hall of Fame. He has all reasons to rest and look back at a successful life.

Young Wolfgang was not a very good student in school. His grades were spotty. Even in high school he liked the sciences but neglected many of the other subjects. His own judgment is best represented when he told me about one day when he brought home his yearly report card at age fifteen. He gave it to his father, who was sitting in the leather chair in his study, puffing from his big cigar. He was not satisfied with what he saw and said:

Wolfgang, you have been excellent in physics and the other sciences but you have neglected the humanities, how do you respond?

The young boy answered:

True, it is the sciences that fascinate me, and I see a definite future in them. I could excel myself to the top and achieve significant results that help all of us. I agree with you that a good basic knowledge of humanities is essential to be a respected person in society, but when I focus on one goal, I may have to postpone other parts of my education to the future, and catch up later.

His father was not satisfied and continued:

What specifically do you have in mind? Do you want to be a medical doctor, or what?

No, not a doctor Wolfgang replied

I cannot see blood, and there is another reason why I feel strongly not to become a doctor: I see much higher rewards becoming a scientist. Here I can improve conditions in the society that may be beneficial to more than one or a few.

His father recognized the determination of his son and let it go this way.

Later, in the military, Wolfgang fulfilled his promise and read up on many subjects that he neglected earlier.

After the war, he returned home to Berlin. His harmonic life had been interrupted by the tragic death of almost his entire family at the very last day of the war, and with it the guiding hands of his parents. Yet his determination to succeed became even stronger. After his university opened again, which was closed at the end of the war, he studied intensively, and the rewards he obtained from his success replaced the comfort and the advice he used to received from his parents. He excelled at every single step in his academic carrier, and was soon recognized beyond his country.

His smooth way up was suddenly interrupted by the devastating political event, the building of the Berlin Wall that forced him to resign and start anew in the United States of America after his emigration.

Continuing his research and teaching here, he soon recognized that he needed to take one step further, to turn from solid state physics, his academic field so far, to solar energy. Here he turned out to be an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a leader in his field. With creative ideas and dedicated work and strategically setting his goals, he started to move to the forefront, and by his own example induced so many others to follow in his footsteps, rewarding him even more.

His carrier’s work of understanding semiconductor physics and from this knowledge developing solar cells has logically turned him into a passionate advocate of alternative energies. He still publishes, and he writes about the need to expand solar and other alternative energies. He has seen that the technology works, having overseen the design and construction of the first solar demonstration house in 1973. Through that project he learned about what worked well and what did not, and went on to solarize his own house in 1976. At the time when he developed these projects, the technology needed a great deal of further improvement, and the cost of converting to solar energy was too high for most people. More than thirty years later, the technology has improved and the economic cost has substantially decreased, and most importantly, the environmental urgency has dramatically increased. Böer insists that decreasing dependence on fossil fuels through expanded use of wind and solar energy will require only efforts and incentives from governments and reassigned priorities in businesses. He now uses his contacts in academia, business and government around the world to bring about change in how people produce energy. His life’s experiences have prepared him for this task, and he sees it as an obligation rather than an opportunity. He will not ignore his perceived call.

But, with others recognizing the potential of his earlier work, he was invited recently by a prominent publishing house to summarize and compose a text that would be of help to future generations. He set down, wrote, and finalized a five-hundred-page volume about the basic science that is necessary to understand solar cells. All of this work done in less than a year, would be enough work for a fifty-year old. But when Professor Böer wrote the summary of his earlier work, he suddenly recognized, that bringing it all together could solve a decade old puzzle. It was CdS then that was the center of his research and permitted his first pioneering effort into solar energy, and it is CdS now, that as a thin layer on top of many thin-film solar cells improves their conversion efficiency substantially. It took him not long to put it all together and now has published three ground breaking papers.

Now, satisfied that his seven decade long work in CdS will brings the fruit he has always hoped for.

Sitting in his retirement home, reviewing what I found in the archives about his life, much detail he had already forgotten, he relaxed in his orchid garden surrounding his pool, to reminisce and to open-up to hours of undisturbed interviews with me.

Ester Riehl.

1

Growing up in Berlin

Wolfgang, as he was called by his family grew up in a sheltered life as an only child in his closely-knit family, with most of his relatives living only a block away, and only his parental grandparents a two-hour train ride away. They visited each other frequently.

1.1 Roots

Image3556.jpg

Lotte at the Piano with sisters Ella (left), Frieda (right) and mother Clara in Charlottenburg, 1920.

Wolfgang’s mother, Charlotte Lotte Gruhlke grew up in Posen together with two older sisters and a younger brother. She lost her father through an accident when she was eleven years old, but her mother Clara (Ciecinsky) Gruhlke managed to educate the children well on a small pension. At the end of World War I, Posen became Posnan and was now part of Poland. The Gruhlkes preferred to continue living in Germany and immigrated to Berlin. Here the daughters contributed to the family’s budget and now lived in a nice apartment in Charlottenburg, near the Tiergarten, a large park in the center of Berlin. Lotte worked first as a junior secretary, and soon acquired technical skills to become a personal assistant to Mr. Ohnesorge (later the German Postal Minister). In 1925 she was helping him to install the first radio link for an opera transmission from Königs-Wusterhausen to Berlin.

Wolfgang’s father Karl (Wilhelm Ernst) Böer grew up in the small garrison town of Ludwigslust (Mecklenburg) as an only child of Karl Böer, a Military sattle maker at the Cavalry, and his wife Marianne. Karl was determined to attend the Gymnasium, the college-preparatory high school about a hundred kilometers away in the town of Rostock, and later, even farther away, in Hannover to study at the University. He knew what he wanted. It was quite unusual for the son of a small-town military family to attend college. When he graduated in1922 with a degree in electrical engineering he found a job at the Siemens Halske Company in Berlin where he eventually became the chief engineer the field of high-frequency furnaces that smelted metal by means of induction. Siemens sold these furnaces across Europe. Böer went to inspect the installation and delivered it to the client.

Image3641.jpg

Karl Böer (center) is shown here on a mission of

Siemens in Leningrad, 1930.

Image3672.jpg

Family in front of a JU 52 at Berlin-Tempelh of airport,

seeing Pappi off on a trip to Leningrad in 1928.

By 1932 he was considered important enough to warrant an assassination attempt by the Soviets while he was working for Siemens in Leningrad. Though it looked like an accident – a heavy steel beam fell and landed only inches from him – he and his colleagues at Siemens took it seriously and he no longer traveled to the Soviet Union after that, especially since a few weeks earlier two British engineers had been killed. The Soviets apparently had learned enough from their European colleagues and planned to nationalize their European subsidiaries. ---such, as the Siemens group in Leningrad which would become Electosila, and would later produce the machines which separate uranium and lithium for their atomic bombs.

As a young engineer he also liked to walk in the Tiergarten. One Sunday morning he witnessed two dogs fighting with each other. One was the German shepherd Prinz of Lotte, which was attacked by a Doberman. Karl came to the rescue of Prinz and thereby met Lotte.

After a short court-hip they were married on September 3, 1925. At that time Charlotte stopped working (a usual custom for a German family) and prepared herself to become a mother. Wolfgang was born on March 23, 1926 in Charlottenburg, a few weeks early, and some complication at his birth prevented further pregnancies. This became a bit of a problem for Wolfgang when his sugar plate on the window sill did not bring success: The stork did not find the sugar to deliver a baby, so he remained the only child.

Image3683.jpg

Charlotte and Karl Böer at their wedding day, September 3, 1925

1.2 Lessons learned at Home

The family moved from Charlottenburg to Spandau about a mile from the elementary school. Wolfgang soon walked to school; he was never late, but it took him much longer to adjust. He was fidgety, and his mind always wandered to other things; though, when asked, he usually knew what the teacher was talking about. His grades stayed low, from satisfactory to fair. His mother went to see his teacher. From then on, she supervised his homework, and sometimes guiding his hand to improve his handwriting. All his grades rapidly improved to good or better, and his mother’s concern and assistance left a lasting effect on the young schoolboy. He saw how important it was to do well in school, and he felt pride in being successful.

Wolfgang also learned to be organized from his mother. As he collected toys and books over the years, they began to clutter his room. His mother bought a bookcase for him. After stacking his books and toys on the shelves, he called his mother to show off his work. Seeing, that he had just piled it up on the shelves in no particular order, she simply told him, No, that won’t do, then she showed him how to organize it, packing similar items into small boxes and placing them in neat rectangular order. He began keeping his desk neat as well: pencils, books and papers lay in straight rows, and everything on the shelf behind the curtain was always neat.

He learned that it was easier to find what he needed if it is well organized. This habit stayed with him, he always kept his workspace neat. Even his color pencils were ordered in rainbow sequence – and they still are.

Though his family put great emphasis on his intellectual development, they did not ignore the importance of physical health. When he was small, his mother would send him with his scooter to get fresh air and play with other children. From his father Wolfgang learned the precept of mens sana in corpore sano: a healthy mind exists only in a healthy body. Despite an injured knee, the senior Böer used to walk regularly with Wolfgang through the nearby forest and insisted on other regular exercise.

Wolfgang visited frequently his grandmother, only a block away, and often got challenged from her to help with little things. One day he found an old alarm clock that no longer worked. He asked her whether he could repair it. She didn’t believe him but didn’t object. So, he took it apart, put all the parts on a white paper, cleaned and oiled them, and put the clock back together; it worked again. Omi was impressed. When he tried this later with his aunt, and dared to take also the spring out of its housing, it snapped. That was the last time he was permitted to take a clock apart.

The family also visited Wolfgang’s paternal grandparents in Ludwigslust every summer, and Wolfgang and his father went for long walks. These walks among the quiet trees provided not only physical exercise, but lessons on nature for young Wolfgang that he still vividly remembers.

This forest had been deliberately planted, and Wolfgang marveled at the trees in their orderly, straight rows and how long it would take – a half of a human lifetime – before they were large enough to be cut for lumber. His father pointed out different varieties of ferns, and Wolfgang learned to recognize many kinds of wild mushrooms.

1.3 Family Time

In Spandau, they kept a small sixteen foot sailboat.

Image3717.jpg

Playing the accordion for Pappi on the boat

With this boat they sailed almost every weekend on the Wannsee in the summer. Here young Wolfgang could play in open air and tried his hands on the accordion. Wolfgang’s father was an avid swimmer. But one day, when he fell from the deck and his father had to jump to fish him out, it was time for swimming lessons. He had to pass two official swimming tests that would allow him to swim in the lake. Here he could prove his stamina, and swim with his father together to the opposite bank of a small lake and back.

Image3750.jpg

Weekends on the boat: young Wolfgang and cousin Dieter with parents and with aunts Ella and Frieda and Omi.

When they later bought a twenty-four-foot cruiser with a cabin big enough for the three of them to sleep, they took much longer trips. Wolfgang learned about sailing with first responsibility to man the foresail, and it also to have the sheet rolled together neatly like a snail on deck.

Image3805.jpg

Wolfgang on the Jollenkreuzer, stitching, ca. age 6.

They took one long trip from Spandau to Lübeck Bay. Here Wolfgang watched his mother embroidering, and he wanted to do some of it too. He first embroidered a small tablecloth, and finally finished one for his grandmother for Christmas.

At home the family relaxed together by making music. Mother or father played the piano, sometimes choosing folk songs that they could sing together, sometimes classical music of Mozart, Haydn or Bach. When he was six, his mother wanted him to learn to also play the piano. Like so many children, the idea sounded good to him, but he did not realize how much practice would be necessary. He put practiced while his father was in Leningrad. He started about a month before Christmas 1932. Now Wolfgang could surprise his father by playing some Christmas carols when he returned home. Böer would later regret that he didn‘t devote more time to practicing when he again liked to use the piano but did not have the capability to play better.

Image3836.jpg

Wolfgang and his family celebrated Christmas in 1932 after his father returned from Russia with the framed oil painting as the Christmas gift behind them.

The family was saving money to build a house, so Wolfgang received only few Christmas gifts. They were a carefully a selected book or some kits. They were also some building sets, deliberately chosen to teach him how to work with the parts he received. When he ran out of parts before finishing it, he had to move on to something else.

1.4 Still more Lessons learned

His mother, however, did take pity on him when he faced a more substantial failure. When he was ten years old he found an old crystal radio from his mother’s time working with Mr. Ohnesorge. It was tucked away in a corner of the attic. He took it apart to rebuild it, just as he had done earlier with an alarm clock. Using a battery and a bulb from his flashlight he sent an electrical current through the parts of the radio, and without any knowledge of physics, he was happy to see that the inductor and some other parts allowed the current to go through and lit the light bulb. But when it came to the capacitor, this did not allow the current to go through. Wolfgang assumed that it was defective. He took it apart, as it was made of mica plates alternating with tin foil stacked onto each other. The mica provided the barrier to prevent the current from passing. He fiddled until he created a short circuit, allowing the current to pass through, and then put the parts back together. Now the radio was truly broken. This exercise with the radio was Wolfgang’s first foray into electrical engineering. His mother observed his efforts, tenaciously but without success. After a discussion with his father, she decided to buy Wolfgang a new crystal radio, even though this purchase went against the family’s philosophy of enjoying only music that they played themselves. Wolfgang had to promise to listen to the radio only in his bedroom, and never for a long time.

He also collected butterflies and mounted them, and grew plants, and fed little animals in his terrarium, as many other boys at his age did. He also collected stones and minerals, and even some metals and alloys, ordered them in small boxes as he received more of them from his father and family friends.

After they moved into the new house, Wolfgang set up his own workshop in the basement. He equipped it with the tools from his grandfather that then became the foundation of his more elaborate shop.

1.5 The Young Scientist

He also set up his first little chemistry laboratory, extended from a chemistry kit he received the next Christmas in 1937. He put it in a separate room of the basement. With his father’s help the small lab grew to include a larger variety of chemicals, some test tubes, beakers, an Erlenmeyer flask, and a spirit burner. Over the years his stock grew and by 1941 he had more than two hundred different chemicals, along with distillation systems, Petri dishes and all types of tools and devices with which to test and perform even complicated organic chemical reactions.

Image3869.jpg

A typical gathering of the extended family, circa 1937: Standing behind, Frieda Gruhlke, Charlotte Böer, Ella Hartwig, Else Grulke, Seated, Wilhelm Gruhlke, Klara Gruhlke, Willi Hartwig, Karl Böer, Marianne Böer, on floor, Wolfgang Böer & Dieter Hartwig

With