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Abstract

Through the Science Council of Japan (SCJ), we proposed the Sahara Solar Breeder (SSB) plan at the G8+5 Academies’ meeting in Rome in 2009, as the most promising concrete solution for global energy and ecological issues.. The SSB plan starts from basic material research on innovative solar Si technology and high-Tc superconducting dc transmission. SSB may be presumed to be a quixotic dream, but the first technology for converting desert sands to solar grade Si has been verified already, for instance by the Japan- Algeria joint project (2010-2015) and the second technology of liquid nitrogen cooled superconducting dc power transmission has been going on by Chubu University group in Japan. We will make our SSB dream come true by extending our collaboration from Algeria to North Africa, Europe and Asia where Turkmenistan is particularly eager to join us. Since we can imagine that the recent proposal of “Global Apollo Program” from the UK could have link with our “Super Apollo Program”, we hope we could accelerate the new Apollo program together to prevent further global warming while providing more energy for civilization of developing countries.

Biography

Professor Hideomi Koinuma started his research career as a polymer chemist at Tokyo University, where he invented biodegradable polycarbonate by copolymerization of CO₂ and epoxide while pursuing his PhD in 1970. After two years as a postdoc at Kansas University in US, he returned to Tokyo to continue his polymer research. In 1981, he switched his research field to energy and electronic materials with a focus on thin film deposition of amorphous silicon and transparent conductive oxides, which was extended to high-Tc superconducting thin films. His primary concern is atomic-scale chemical control of surface, interface, and epitaxy of materials. He has founded three international conferences: Workshops of Oxide Electronics (since 1995) Combinatorial Material Science and Technology (since 2000) and the first Asia-Africa Sustainable Energy Forum (since 2011). He has served as the director of the Materials Research Laboratory at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, as vice-president of the National Institute for Materials Science, and as a senior fellow of Japan Science & Technology Agency. He is currently serving as a guest Professor of Tokyo, Tsukuba, and Chubu Universities, as an associate member of Science Council of Japan, as the Chairman of Comet, Inc., Ltd.( a high-tech venture) as well as of Japanese-Turkmen Association of Science & Technology Cooperation.