Hunter McDaniel of UbiQD on engineering the tiniest particles to have an enormous impact on lighting, agriculture, solar power and more

Today's guest is Hunter McDaniel of the company UbiQD. As in ubiquitous, but the "QD" stands for quantum dots. Today's episode is one of those wide ranging talks that has become a hallmark of some of our best M4Edge discussions. We cover not just what a quantum dot is and what UbiQD does, but the Department of Energy's National Laboratory system and the importance of basic science in the innovation process. We talk about solar power generation from your tinted windows, and we even talk about cannabis. UbiQD makes quantum dots, which are so small they're kind of impossible to imagine as you'll hear Hunter describe. Their size; their existence at the nanoscale or, more precisely, the quantum scale makes them effective at absorbing a broad spectrum of light and then converting that energy into emitted light of specific colors that you can choose or "tune" with a precise manufacturing process. So, for example, you can tune the dots to emit an orange kind of late or blue late or whatever you want. Much like our 2020 kickoff guest, Alison Kopf of Artemis, Hunter and UbiQD have chosen the indoor agriculture industry as a good first target market, including the fast booming cannabis market. But the potential for QD is enormous, including energy efficiency and lighting, solar power from the walls and windows of your skyscrapers, thinking and pigments and more. It's pretty fascinating; imagine these tiny, tiny things that could have a huge, huge impact on how we power our economy. 

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https://www.energy.gov/national-laboratories

Transcript

Michael:   0:00
hi there, m for EJ listeners. Before we start the show, we wanted to let you know about a new venture Marco and I are launching that were quite excited about. We're calling it the M four strategy garage. It's a strategic advisory service. Aim that startups in their growth phase, depending on how you have raised money and how you've grown. That could mean companies who just received the Siri's a funding company thinking about raising serious be funding or even later. The point is that the Strategy garage is for companies who, perhaps for the first time, I have to do some serious thinking about their future market our year or two or even five or 10 down the road. Maybe you have his chief strategy officer, but her time is taken up by tactical work. Or, more likely, you don't have a CSO yet, or you're just perpetually short staffed. Or perhaps you don't have the proper skill set for strategy interpreting your company's Mexican on the context. That's where we come in. So what is the Strategy Garage? It's a Siri's of different strategy offerings available individually or bundled. Priced for a start UPS budget for example. Hour roadside assistance will help you understand how macro economic news might affect your market. Our alignment check will help make sure your C suite is all focusing on the right issues in a consistent manner. Our tune up and rebuild can help you improve your strategy or build it from scratch, and our test drive will help you do rigorous scenario planning. We'll use our experience of leading innovation strategy for some very large and established organizations, combined with our experience working with startups. Toe Help your startup grow. If you're a startup CEO, CFO CEO and would like to learn more or a V C or other funder and no company that cues are service's, please reach out. Send an email to Strategy garage at M for ej dot com. That's strategy garage one word at M the number four ej dot com

Hunter McDaniel:   2:00
The next major technology Advancements in society are going to be ultimately driven by materials, and one of the the key you know frontiers is around Anna materials. I do. I'm very passionate about what men and materials can do for society and what they'll enable, and energy is just where you know I'm I'm personally passionate about. So my perspective is that advanced materials are going to ultimately bring the cost of energy down to being almost negligible, where we don't really even think about it. Kind of like, you know, you don't think about. We don't pay anything for the oxygen that we breathe. Um, but even water, we kind of take for granted that, you know, it's not a big portion of our utility bill for most people, um, we're not very efficient with it because it's so abundant. Energy is going to be the same way. I think we'll have energy production embedded in everywhere will be ubiquitous

Marco:   2:56
ubiquitous Michael here. Thanks for being curious and welcome to em for EJ, the podcast about startups with

Michael:   3:04
technology that will change how our economy functions. Today's guest is Hunter McDaniel of the company ubiquity. That's you be I Q D and the Q D stands for quantum dots. Today's episode is one of those wide ranging talks that has become a hallmark of some of our best, and for EJ discussions recover not just what a quantum dot is and what you big what he does, but the national laboratory system and the importance of basic science in the innovation process. We talk about solar power generation from your tinted windows, and we even talk about Canada's ubiquity. Makes quantum dots, which are so small they're kind of impossible to imagine as you'll hear 100 describe their size. Their existence at the nanoscale or, more precisely, the quantum scale makes them effective at absorbing a broad spectrum of light and then converting that energy into emitted light of specific colors that you can choose or tune with a precise manufacturing process. So, for example, you can tune the dots to emit an orange kind of late or blue late or whatever you want. Much like our 2020 kickoff guest, Alison Cop of Artemus, Hunter and Ubiquity have chosen the indoor agriculture industry as a good first target market, including the fast booming cannabis market. But the potential for QD is enormous, including energy efficiency and lighting, solar power from the walls and windows of your skyscrapers, thinking and pigments and more. It's pretty fascinating conversation. Imagine these tiny, tiny things that could have a huge, huge impact on how we power our economy. If you enjoyed this episode, which I'm sure you will. Please give us a rating on apple podcasts. It really does help. And that reminds me a special shout out and thank you to three recent reviewers, SG 1981 and see Fly 1 75 and two. The one last thought podcast gave us a review. So thanks. And check out their show

Marco:   5:05
too. And now, without further ado, here's Hunter McDaniel, Hunter McDaniel of ubiquity. Welcome to M Forage.

Hunter McDaniel:   5:15
Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for having me,

Michael:   5:17
Hunter. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for joining us today. And our icebreaker is always the same. Why, You know, for you during this, But in your case, I think before we get into it that we need that a little bit of a tutorial on what it is that you're doing us a little tutorial on what the pack is, what it does, how it works. And first of all, can you explain to us and the listeners what quantum dots are?

Hunter McDaniel:   5:45
Yeah. So this is really a natural next step for me in my career after, and I have a technical background. So I went to UCSB for undergrad, studied electrical engineering and physics and I got the bug for material science there because I was in a physics research group that was working on quantum computing and the materials guy was the most important guy in the room. They couldn't really do anything without really high quality materials. That's especially true with quantum computing. And so then, after that, I got a PhD in materials University of Illinois and had an opportunity to do a post doc in the same field of science that lost almost national laboratory. And so, uh, the business is focused on the same thing that I guess I've been doing for the past 15 so or so years of my career. And so I sort of just It was the natural next step, Um, and then as faras ah, Reader's Digest version about what quantum dots are, Um, you know, these are very tiny particles of semiconductor. It's a nanotechnology that has this fundamental property of being ah, where you can tune the color of the materials by changing the size of the particles. So this is a quantum effect, which is why they're called quantum, and then dots comes from the fact that they're very small, little specks of material, little dots of semiconductor and normally a semiconductor has the fundamental property called it's Band Gap, which correlates to its color the color of the material. Um, but if you wanted to change the color of a material in the past, you would have to come up with a new compound. So a new molecule or new foster or semiconductor material a quantum dots they you're basing detective. You know, it's still fundamental composition of matter that has a color, but when you make the particles small enough, they start to change. Eventually you get to a regime where this making the particles smaller and smaller changes that band gap for that color property. And so, with this one composition of matter, you're able to achieve the whole rainbow of colors, which makes it a platform technology. And that's really what we do. That's what that's what I've been doing for, like it had passed 15 or so years of my career and what we do with the company in the name of the company ubiquity issued for ubiquitous quantum dots

Michael:   7:56
and your website is quite a good statistics to fix a D own just how small this particle siding, you say, takes 100,000 off his notes just to cover one of four finger in its

Hunter McDaniel:   8:09
Yeah, that's it's kind of their impossibly small, and that's one way that we try toe bring it down into a more tangible ah size. You can't even really imagine how small they are. So one way we like to do is have had a jar of them here. You could just bear with me. Imagine that I'm holding a vial. Um, there'll be more quantum if it was full of quantum. Got to be more quantum dots in that jar. Then there are known stars in the universe. So it's It's kind of at the scale of like as small, which means as many, many, many, many of them as you could possibly imagine and that, you know, that's that's what gives them their very, very useful properties and why we call him It's a nanotechnology because they're there are nanoparticles very, very tiny particles.

Michael:   8:56
So under your technology, it's an outgrowth of work done at Los Alamos National Lab, right?

Hunter McDaniel:   9:03
Yeah, yeah, I was a post doc at the lab

Michael:   9:07
before. For listeners who may not be familiar with how the Department of Energy lab system works. Maybe talk a little bit about what? The lab is in the role that the federal R and D please, in technology progress generally, like, you know, would would this tech have evolved without federal, r and D talk a little bit about, you know, the role of of that part of the U. S. Innovation system.

Hunter McDaniel:   9:34
Yeah, definitely. So, you know, I'm very grateful to the Department of Energy and the national lab system for giving me this opportunity to start the company. Um, the history is pretty interesting. The national lab system was originally developed out of the Manhattan Project back in the forties during World War Two. They were trying to develop nuclear vision technology. Ah, for basically had a fear that someone else would get it first. And then in the war, we would lose because we wouldn't have that capability. And then later, um, towards the end of the war, when it was ready for deployment. Um, you know, it's very controversial, but it was used as a way, you know, party. Some people would view it as a way that we ended the war or avoided land invasion of Japan, which would have cost many casualties very controversial. Anyway, at the end of the national lab, you know, at the end of the war, the national labs there several had been built to develop this technology. And, um, there was a very positive attitude about what we should leverage that for peaceful purposes. And so the focus kind of transition towards energy, nuclear technology for energy applications and then more broadly, um, just basic energy, science, um, and national security. And so each National Live has its own kind of, uh, character and culture. And what they focus on lots, almost is the one that has remained Maur National Security Focus. Um, that means there is a lot of weapons research here, but also a lot of just very deep nuclear kind of classified stuff like non proliferation. There is some energy nuclear energy research that goes on here, but still about 70% of the work that happens at Los Alamos is classified. So it's kind of an interesting place to live because, you know, you'll be like at the playground playing with, you know, the kids are playing on the jungle gym in the in. The natural question is, though, What do you do? I work in ah, X division or which is like Oh, okay, don't ask anything else if they say that kind of thing. Um, and most of the people with 70% of the work that goes on here being classified, most people can't talk about what they do. But the other 30% is where I fell into, Um, which falls under, um, there's different ways of kind of describing why it's relevant for you. No taxpayer. Why? Why? Because this is taxpayer funded. Um, and we would describe ours is being under energy security. So, you know, I was doing research and it was in the chemistry division, but focused on, um, energy applications and in particular, ah, solar energy was where I was. You are not our whole group, but that was where I was passionate and where my project was focused. And so the idea they're being is that if we become less reliant on foreign sources of energy, then we have better energy, uh, self reliance and energy security. And that's why the work was that that was the angle that under which the work was funded. Um, t work on something that wasn't weapons related or wasn't classified in our research group. Hopefully that answers the question, but

Michael:   12:39
yeah, absolutely. I guess I just know totally that was a useful history. And thanks for the, you know, the explanation. I think I guess the other thing that I wanted t t t hit on a little bit was, you know, what often said is the rationale for federal argenti is that there's speaking as an ex Dewey guy. There's sort of a market failure in corporate or privately funded are indeed that the federal government, um uh, fixes or it's a gap the federal government fills because there's not enough are indeed, uh, dollars spent just by the private sector because the gains aren't fully captured by the entity that spends it, so

Hunter McDaniel:   13:19
yeah. Yeah, well, that's right. And so in this case, this was funded by the basic energy sci B s, um, program at the d. O. D. And so at some point, the technology gets mature enough where it's more applied, more engineering, and that would fall outside the scope of the type of thing that B. E. S basic energy sciences would fund. And so, in our case, you know these types of things that are too far out for industry, for for investment. Usually it's kind of like, you know, on paper looks really good. But can we prove that this physics is Israel and that it's actually going to be useful? And so our group was really focused on trying to leverage some of the novel photo physics of quantum dots for energy. And there's a couple different ways that you know that when I don't we don't think we need to get into the weeds on that. But there's a couple different ways that you can, um, you could use Diana materials to achieve either higher efficiency, um, or new ways of deploying the technology that would lower cost. And that was kind of the basis for the funding was this is really basic energy science that's not ready for, you know, for industry, too, to run with it too far out. And it did become more applied. And so the natural next step was to look for corporate partners, and when we had that for a lot of the time that I was a Post, Doc, Um, we had a corporate partner that was funding part of the research. And then, um, you know, that was the natural. Next step was, Let's take this out into the marketplace. And that's what the company was about in 2014 when I found it.

Michael:   14:52
Got it. Great. All right, let's let's go back. T ubiquity itself market. You wanna take this next one? Yeah, because you've done a great job of the beginning off explaining how quantum dots work. And we just heard that this is mostly about energies. So let's start with the applications. Use quantum dots. You were saying you have the great ability off taking a broad spectrum off light and then any pretty that voting it. The biggest application so far as we understand it is in the agricultural field. You talk a little bit about that and how it's the technology is used in greenhouses and why it's so powerful.

Hunter McDaniel:   15:33
Yeah, well, actually, the that's where we're focused, that ubiquity zb agriculture, and I'm with you on. That's the biggest application, the biggest market. But today the biggest, um, actual commercial deployment isn't display. And so I think it's we're taking a step back just to I understand a little bit the history of quantum dots because they're not knew where that first company and we're not the inventors of quantum dots. Um, what we've done has developed a new composition, a new material that you can make quantum dots out of, and then new manufacturing and new applications that come out of it. But the original quantum dot material was first, um, demonstrated back about 40 years ago. Now, 35 years ago and, you know, in the history of it was that it was, well, initially very difficult. Even proved that you could make different colors from the same compound. They were sort of little, uh, you couldn't. It was very difficult to synthesize materials that had a uniform size, and so you could actually see this effect. The physics suggested that it would work, but about 35 or so years ago was first demonstrated, and it was demonstrated with some toxic compounds based off of cadmium. And then lead, um and then more recently, Foss ified. And so, um, they have this toxicity problem from basically day one, and over those years, um ah, it turned out that the most toxic stuff was the most easy to fabricate. It's very difficult to make uniform sized particles and billions of them at the same time, Um, but over time people figured out how to do that. So it's been, you know, something that's been matured over the years in academia and in the national lab system, and a little bit of an industry to the point now where we can make very precise particles all the same size, a number of different compositions. And and it was a challenge. What was there? There's so many different use cases for this, uh, quantum dots are very effective at converting one color

Michael:   17:23
of

Hunter McDaniel:   17:23
light into another. And so almost any use case where light is involved, you can imagine a way that climb bots can improve that process or improve that that technology. Um, but it turned out because the toxicity and also, um, you know, going to their small size, they had stability issues, and it wasn't that it was. It could be very expensive to make these particles at a large scale that limited the applications and the 1st 1 that actually became a rial. You know, It's a market penetration kind of Ah, you know, the first big win was in display. Before that, there were some other early attempts. There was, like, $100 light bulb back in the mid 2000 that didn't sell. There were some Christmas

Michael:   18:06
lights that that didn't

Hunter McDaniel:   18:09
sell. Um,

Michael:   18:10
and then

Hunter McDaniel:   18:10
there were a bunch of ah, bio. Ah, like labeling, um, applications where you could tag a cell. You put some quantum dots into, you know, green quantum dots into this cell and red quantum dots. That cell you can sort of watch what those cells do in the way that doesn't interfere with the cell's normal, um, operation. So there were these ideas and some proof of concepts and some attempts at products. But the first commercial traction really came in 2000 I believe, 13,014. And that was one of the big motivators for me to start the company. And that first product was a stony television that had quantum dots in it that was improving the color quality of the display, taking a blue back light blue led backlight and then converting some of that into red light, and some of it into green light with two different sizes of quantum dots, and that enabled a very high color quality but also better energy efficiency. About 20% better wall plug efficiency because those blue ladies in the back light are more efficient than a white led. And that was the kind of the starting gun for this display. Quantum dots on display In the next year, we had Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet had a quantum dot display, and now it's every major TV manufacturers is using quantum or quantum dot as a buzzword to sell, um, their top line products. Samsung was really big on this couple of years ago with the Q led brand Que standing quantum dots. But now it's, you know, it's a yes this year, every single TV manufacturers talking about quantum dots. I'm like, I just got 11 of these new TVs of Ezio with quantum dot Um, it's just a very small change to the LCD TV that makes it better TV in competitive with OLEDs or other New York kind of types of displays, but without adding a whole lot of cost. And so, um, that's where we're at today. There are about six million or so TVs, I believe, sold last year with quantum dots in them, and we're talking average selling price of maybe $1000. So it's like a $56 billion industry per year in products that have quantum dots in them. But they're still using those toxic compounds, and they've made improvements. Don't get me wrong. But those improvements usually come at the cost of toxicity, very stability and cost. And so what we figured out how to do, um, focusing on applications that are very cost sensitive, like solar and are very toxicity sensitive. Um, where you need a lot of material, like in solar. Um, was developed another compound that didn't have any of those toxic elements. It's a copper and zinc sulfide. And it turns out that, um, what we got for free or sort of got lucky with was that we could make this material much less, um, much more efficiently at a lower cost. And it turned out it was also more stable. And so this was kind of the basis for the company in 2014 was well, we solve these problems with previous generations of quantum dots. Now, if we just manufacture them at scale and get the cost down, Then everybody's gonna use this material instead of these other compounds. Um, but we figured out what kind of the hard way after a couple of years of making materials and basically marketing them towards the R and D market that these up really exciting applications. Some of them were just waiting. And no one was, you know, running with the torch into these new feet, this new directions that we saw the big opportunities agriculture being number one there. And so we decided to focus on one of those and do some heavy lifting ourselves and building out, proving out that concept. It's agriculture is the one, um, that that we're focused on now, partially because I don't want to compete with the display guys, but also because our materials are really well suited and we think for just for agriculture, and we think that the value proposition is actually stronger there. The value that the material brings to a grower greenhouse grower is higher than the value that it brings to a display maker or eventually to customer watching a TV. And so in that agriculture application um, just a really, you know, whittle it down to the basic idea. We improve the quality of sunlight by absorbing certain colors and then converting those colors that are more effectively used by plants. There's also some additional benefits, but that's the main idea. Is improving the quality of sunlight in the greenhouse

Michael:   22:24
So you've got two? Let's let's, uh, elaborate on that last bit a little bit. So for different crops, you've got, um, ideal ranges of the light spectrum that are more effective or that have been proven to be more effective at promoting growth or promoting photosynthesis than others. Correct?

Hunter McDaniel:   22:48
Yeah. I mean the

Michael:   22:50
if you

Hunter McDaniel:   22:50
look at the absorption spectrum of chlorophyll, it doesn't just absorb all the colors that got peaks in the red and the blue. And so you kind of get the idea that, well, plants maybe only need red and blue light, and this is also why green leaves or most plants look green is because they're not absorbing green light very effectively. They're reflecting it or scattering it, whereas they're absorbing the red and the blue light. And so that gives you a hand right there. Um, but it turns out. Plants are very complex. There are there are molecules besides chlorophyll that it can absorb light. And then they have theirs. Energy transfer complexes and other processes that lead Thio energy going to chlorophyll strife, photosynthesis. Even though it's not directly absorbed and long story short, there's a lot of research that's gone into this. The most efficient color for photosynthesis is actually not on that peak for chlorophyll. It's slightly to the blue of that. It's at about 600 animators. Is this orange color reddish color? Um, and and so what we're doing is we're shifting colors over to that peak, where it's most efficiently used, on average by crops. But then there's also some triggering effects where plants sense the seasons one way. They, since the season's, is by the color because the sun will set lower in the sky as you go closer to fallen into winter, and that gives you more of a red sky. More looks more like sunset more than most the time that'll trigger plant into wanting to be more vigorous and its growth put on fruit or make seeds so that I can survive through the winter. And then there's the last one last effect is this glow. We're taking the light that's coming from a point source the sun and converting it to a nice a tropic commission basically glow. You know that the roof is emitting light in all directions, and that gives you another benefit of light, being able to penetrate lower in the canopy because you can imagine when a leaf is sitting above another relief. It's shaded by the sun. But if you had your entire, you know, building sort of emitting light from all directions because it's glowing, then you can get that that low relief, more light. And it's also more potent light, since the color because the color was converted to a more efficient color,

Michael:   25:00
right for people to three will have the benefit of the delegate. Your website of materials you sent this earlier. They're probably wondering what these billions and billions of tiny, tiny little particles are, how they're actually deployed in a greenhouse. So there are these sheets of fabric that you guys, um, what basically, you know, attached to the to the greenhouse material suffered becomes degree now's material, or how does that? What does it look like? How does it actually work? What's the deployment?

Hunter McDaniel:   25:28
Yeah, so you can imagine it's just like any other pigment. In some sense, it's a luminescent pigment that we've engineered to have certain properties. But you can put, um, you know, like a color pigment into plastic or, um, as a coating on things. And that's the way we deploy. The synthesizer has synthesized. The reaction is a liquid phase, but the materials themselves are are solid little crystals of semiconductor. So we can We can crash that down, purified down to a powder, and then that powder can be added into polymers or other liquids. Or we can actually, without even going all the way to the powder. We can keep it as a liquid kind of concentrate, and that liquid concentrate can be mixed in with other polymers. Or, um, so there's It's very flexible in terms of the way that you deploy the technology as faras. What we've done with our first product is it goes into a plastic sheet initially in a liquid form, but then that's cured by, um, basically an ultraviolet light that takes a liquid monomer precursor to a polymer, and then they cross links it into a solid material, and we do that in a roll to roll fashion. So makes these rolls of plastic film that have the dot in, um and then that could be deployed into any existing greenhouse by stringing it up basically underneath the existing roof or push, you know, could be flush right up against the roof. Um, it's not meant to be your roof, though, and we know there's a lot of advantages to being in directly in the construction materials of the building. And thats direction that we're going. Hopefully, been into this year in time for the 2021 grow season will have, ah, full cover product on the market. That is another option for your roof, but right now it's just kind of something you can hang above your plants underneath your existing greenhouse roof.

Michael:   27:12
Got it great. And hunter, you were explaining earlier how the product that shifts of the spectrum of the light more towards the orange ridges for maximum efficiency question I had was a double question. One is are there specific crops for which this throws the sense of being more powerful than for others in the ancillary question is, does the process and the spectrum of the light needs to be tweaked differently for different crops?

Hunter McDaniel:   27:44
Great questions. Marco. Yeah, so we have been focusing on crops that have the highest value per unit area. And that's because if we boost the yields a 5 10 20% the value that we bring relative to the area of our film is proportional to the value of the crop. It's actually proportional to the margin that they get on that additional revenue and additional revenue. Some crops take more labor or something. If you If you produce more tomatoes, there's gonna be more labor to go. Pick goes to me those and that varies by crops. Um, so we focused on high value crops, and that points you, too. Cannabis is an obvious one that everyone has about, but in the world of vegetables, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, um, are near the top of the list, and as you come down, you'll get to, like, cut flowers. It's not really vegetables, but, um, in that, that realm of things that grow in a greenhouse cut flowers and then you can get down the leafy greens. Um, like lettuce, obviously things that are organic are gonna be higher value than but usually almost everything in a greenhouse is organic because you're able to keep passed out with just the structure itself. Um, so we really and we and we do need to focus because there's different regions, types of greenhouses, types of crops. Um, you know, different types of customers. And so we have focused on tomatoes, and we've seen that's the largest vegetable market. We've seen the best results with tomatoes among any crops, um, and then cannabis and cucumbers, mostly a SZ faras adjusting the color. Um, it's not something that we can do once the materials manufactured. It has a color based on, um, the synthesis. The certain size of the particles have and weaken tune that pretty easily. But after the fact that's done, once we've made it, it's done. But you might imagine having different color films for um, either different crops or different stages of growth. For example, with cannabis, um, they'll actually grow the crops when they're growing at indoor. They'll grow the crops under 2 to 3 different lights over the course of the of the cycle. At the beginning, it's usually more of a bluer spectrum, Um, in that mimics sort of peak of summer, when the sun's high in the sky that triggers the plan into growing sort of big and tall. And then later in the second half of the cycle or so, they'll switch it to more of a redder spectrum more of an orange color, depending on the type of lamps that they have And that triggers could be one of the ways that you triggered the plant to the flowering stage, going from vegetative to flowering. And that's just the cannabis plant. Tomatoes are pretty much always in the flowering mode, so you kind of always want to give them that second, that the same conditions of the second half of that cannabis grow condition. So you can imagine having different colored films that could roll out depending on the stage of the crop or the type of crop, something we're still learning about. But different crops can have different preferred spectra. Um, you know, we've seen this in the Netherlands, where we do some of our plant trials, where you you'll see that they used different lights with different crops of one is that they example, this is that they've used, um, a different spectrum for roses. They initially developed some led lights for tomatoes, and it was it was just reading and blue led ese. But when they grew roses underneath those, um, same lamps they were getting, um I believe it was a shorter kind of stock here, Rose and maybe let healthy looking Rose. And what's valued in the rose market is long stems and so that they wanted a spectrum. I was gonna give a little bit longer stem. At the end of the day, I think they just added some green. But it's like a proprietary spectrum that they wouldn't let us measure because we have little handheld spectrometer measuring these things. Um, but it was ultimately they would had a little bit more green light and by I looked more like a white, um ah, whiter light rather than the magenta that they were using on tomatoes. So anyway, what I'm trying to say is that there's this is ah, pretty exciting area right now. Research, what color drives, what outcomes for what crops. And there's a lot of variation A teams, and I think that's an opportunity for us Because with our quantum dots, we can dial in almost any arbitrary spectrum, and you could make products tailored for different crops or different stages of growth. But for now, we're focused on tomatoes. Yeah,

Michael:   31:59
it's fancy is going to ask you Is it something that you can only figure out or largely figure out by trial and error, seeing what works for different points and what doesn't or is there something in the chemistry or biology of different plants that eggs NT can lead you to think? Okay, maybe for this specific plans, in this stage of growth, this kindof spectrum would be better.

Hunter McDaniel:   32:24
Well, you know, I think the technology has advanced much faster. T control, light using l ladies, then our understanding of the plants. And I have to hold in my hand and say, I am not plant biologist. I'm a material scientists. So, um, it's gonna be a little bit hand waving for me to try to explain

Michael:   32:43
this sort of

Hunter McDaniel:   32:43
thing. Um, you know, I've got I've got some people on the team that are that are actually experts on this, and I rely on them, um, on the science of plant biology. But, um, I think there's some things that you can point to just looking at the leaves measuring the molecules, the composition of the leaves and what the absorption spectrum of the leaves are, and that that was initially what drove, ah, lot of interest around just red and blue. And if you look it even still, some of the supplier some of the big companies, um, supply primarily just red and blue led is for it'll have both. It's like a magenta lamp, but if you look carefully, there'll be a sum like four or five ratio of red to blue in those lamps, and that was driven by just looking at the absorption spectrum or of chlorophyll. But over the past, stay two or three years, it's become much more popular to create a broad spectrum led lamp. There's a company called Fluent Bioengineering. It's based in Austin that got bought by Oz Ram believe last year the year before, and they pioneered the idea of broad spectrum melodies where they would add in phosphor, er's and other mixtures of colors to achieve a broad spectrum. And actually, people thought green light wasn't useful at all because it's absorbed by chlorophyll. But turns out green is important and one reason being that green isn't absorbed very effectively. But that means penetrates lower into the canopy. So those lower leaves see mostly green light, actually, and they still and that's important for a full body health. Ah, full plant body health. So, um, it's a little bit of I think of of, um, you know, some empirical, um, let me tell. There's a lot of empirical and a little bit less of the theory, as far as I understand for what drives the spectrum. And that's a frustrating thing for me because I'm used to, you know, you have an idea go in the lab. You know, do your experiment. You get your data. You didn't need to go back to the office and work up the data and plot it and see if you know, draw some conclusions. But you're talking like a very short cycle. There. You can enter a quickly, but with plants, you gotta have really good statistics. So a lot of plants to get a meaningful outcome. They're very sensitive. Tell that all the stuff, not just what you're testing do you gotta make sure sensor sends. Obviously gotta water them every day, same time and

Michael:   35:00
make

Hunter McDaniel:   35:00
sure you know, over watering him. And a lot of little things can have effects on plants, and then you have to just wait right you have to. You have to set your experiment and then do everything. Take care of the plants, and that's a It's a slow process. And if you want really good commercial data, you're talking about a whole season where you gotta set everything up and then just wait. Get the data. And I think that's unfortunately where we're at today is that the technology is available to dial in every single aspect of the growth. It might be very expensive in the economical for commercial growers to use it, but as far as understanding, we can dial in anything. We just don't nearly know what to dial in and test or, you know, we were starting

Michael:   35:43
dialling things,

Hunter McDaniel:   35:43
but you got a way, you know, So it's it's exciting time for this space for sure.

Michael:   35:49
I wanna I wanna go back to your point about Ostrom and led market in a second, but I just I have to interject with this point. You were talking about the different, um, parts of the spectrum and you were talking about the different crops that you're focusing on. And it just occurred to me like how really remarkable it is that the legacy of Los Alamos, you know, starting with Manhattan has come to cannabis and organic cut flowers and tomatoes. I mean, it's pretty fantastic on the number of different levels, So let's let that hang for it.

Hunter McDaniel:   36:23
I have been kind of even very, very annoyed about this, you know, coming out of the national laboratory and with some government funding we have, we have funding from National Science Foundation and that's Ah, um, and it's definitely not okay to use that funding. And we're not using that funding to ah, you know, do cannabis research or attack the cannabis industry. Um, but even just mentioning it is, you know, it's around here were based, everyone just randomly drug tests at the national laboratory. So

Michael:   36:54
there's just very taboo. Um, you know, but

Hunter McDaniel:   36:57
But then, if

Michael:   36:58
you you know,

Hunter McDaniel:   36:58
now that we've kind of been more successful in or less like, sound like, you know, just a bunch of crazy entrepreneurs, we actually have revenue and stuff. And if you ask the folks, um, over across defense, um, you seem a Starbucks or something and they think it's cool like that. It's not like, Ah, I don't Maybe times have changed, you know, it's just becoming more socially acceptable. But, um, no, I think it's

Michael:   37:21
the

Hunter McDaniel:   37:21
way they were planned. Agnostic were not a cannabis company, and it's just market opportunity for us. That's an obvious one.

Michael:   37:28
Yeah, I mean, can of a society. It's even if you're talking just about tomatoes or cut flowers and you know it back, it's back to why it is federal, R and D exist. And you know, when, when the labs were founded, no one thought that any of the energy or physics research would eventually lead to more efficient, crop growing right? And, you know, in some sort of indirect way, you know, you're you're the intellectual heirs of that original research, and it's pretty remarkable. It's, you know, people always ask, Well, what's this funding going to win? The scientists plans. Well, it's going to this very now a research topic, you, 1000 other things and in fact, here units literally let 1000 flowers bloom, right? I mean, that's Yeah, and we

Hunter McDaniel:   38:07
weren't talking about agriculture When I was at the national lab, we weren't agriculture was never really on our radar as a possible use case. It was more about energy and solar. And then that's when I founded the company. The horizons expanded and became. I was more open minded to like Well, you know, it doesn't have to be energy. Let's let's just do the math and see where it makes the most sense. But you're right that I think it's that's that's what basic science is really all about, is you don't really know where it's gonna go. You just have sort of faith that that this fundamental understanding of the way the universe works is gonna have ah utility for in a may. Be a long tail like it may not be tomorrow are five years, maybe 20 years from now. Um, but it's it's a bet that's always seems to pay off, you know, and it doesn't lead to dead ends like it always pays off. But in general, I think it's one of the things that made this country so great is all the fundamental science that we've supported as taxpayers.

Michael:   39:07
Right? Right. Totally agree. So let me let me go back to Ah, a little bit more, um, pedestrian, you know, from the from the highfalutin thoughts of the benefits of R and D and activist question on your competitors in the space. So you mentioned Ost ram. And so one of the things that's always interesting when you're looking at were disruptive. Technology fits in, is who were they disrupting? So you're not going necessarily head head against other Judy companies because there aren't so many in your in your space, But you are going after the led market. And so you know, for you you don't know one of the, you know, pieces of magic about Ellie gazes that those air also relatively easily tunable nowadays. Um, and even though they're, you know, in the long history of, um, electric lighting, they're sort of a Johnny come lately. They're already pretty well understood. So how how do you approach a customer, especially if they've they've Maybe if it's a large agribusiness operation that has other farms that have installed led how do you tell them I've got something better for you? What's your What's your What's the value proposition? Argument?

Hunter McDaniel:   40:16
Yeah, it's a great question. So, l ladies, um, you know, our our excellent light sources. And I think the penetration last time I saw was around 30% of all. Ah, general elimination is now with led. That may even be hired in that, um and but why isn't it closer to 100%? Because And in some markets, I think like street lights. Um, commercial. Ah, retail. Um, the numbers were higher, but why isn't it isn't a higher number, and it's simply because of the costs associated with, um, the capital investment that you have to make the purchase that that led bowl, and that's come down. But I think what held led is back over the years. It's just walking down that aisle at Home Depot. Um, and now I don't know if they even give you the option of buying that incandescent bulb anymore. There's just fluorescent lamps and others, but you're used to paying, you know, it is a tense since a light bulb, and then the price all of a sudden became $3 or $10 I guess a couple of years ago. And of course, the packaging has the math for you on that. Why it's actually cheaper to buy the $10 libel that this incident labeled having to do with all of the energy savings and the fact that the Tencent lightbulb only last whatever 8000 hours and this led bulb will last you. 50,000 hours. And so it just takes some consumer education, I guess. But that's sort of the same. Um, the same fundamental argument against that we're making now is that led Zehr just very expensive to manufacture. Prices have come down, but your capital investment that you make, um, for L E D's, um, is significantly higher. Um, and you're talking about, like, $2000 or so for a light fixture, which equates to, um, on the order of about 50 to $60 per square foot toe light a greenhouse just to buy those ladies. Now that's true. The last 5 to 10 years, Um, and if they led, guys were trying to sell into that market against the incumbents, which would be like high pressure sodium lamps or fluorescent lamps. The argument There is energy savings as well it's more expensive to buy this lamp. Actually, not that much more than those really high brightness horticulture lamps. But but the energy efficiency and then the fact that you don't have to get up there on ladders and replace those bulbs and stuff is the argument that they make. Well, we make that same argument, but flip a little bit back on its head. Um, we don't you know, we're a lot were a lot cheaper in terms of just the actual sticker price, about $3 a square foot versus that $60 I mentioned. But then we also don't have any operation expenses aside from potentially getting up in cleaning. And if it gets dirty over time, the film, which is something that you would do anyway for, you know, if you're if you're getting dirt in your greenhouse, you have to clean clean it up anyway, Um, but we don't have that electricity expense that l ladies ah, haven't even with energy efficiency of eh, ladies, that's about five toe. Could be $10 a square foot per year just to operate those ladies, depending on how frequently use him. But there are some things that led. You could do that. We can not to make it totally one sided. Like, just slam dunk on there. You know, on, um um, ladies can turn on in the dark. And so if you want to run 24 7 our film doesn't help that we take sunlight and improve it. So if the sun is, you know, is down or if it's a cloudy day, there's no light for our film to be, um, turned on by basically. And that's used to to growers advantages and more northerly climates in a way that we can't really address. Um, which is, you know, the winter up in Canada or saying the Netherlands or Scandinavia. Um, the days get really short. And plants don't do very well with that short day. Um, they're just They haven't evolved to handle such a short photo period. And so you turn on those lights in the evening and in the mornings, too. Extend the day basically. So that's an advantage. Um, but the same time it doesn't make sense to use, eh, ladies, or you're very You have a difficult time in the peak of summer improving your spectrum. You're just really you've got this huge light source, which is the sun above. And you know, if you try to turn on all your ladies to tryto, you know, shift the spectrum, you're just adding more light to the total light, and in some cases, that's helpful. But in other cases, you could be hurting the plants and getting bad outcomes coming. And the effect that that extra light is having is gonna be marginal. Whereas that's when our product really shines. Ah, bad pun, I guess.

Michael:   44:38
Ah, where the more

Hunter McDaniel:   44:40
the more sunlight that you have, the more we get turned. Our material, you know, is, um excited, you know, is energized basically, and so you get even more bonus and even more benefit. So you could argue that its synergistic in, you know, in the summer you would want to use our product, and we pretty much have a product up all the time. But you don't turn the lights on. It's only really in the winter or in certain climates already cloudy days where you would need the lights and they could be synergistic, but 20 x cheaper if we're gonna do two apples to apples. If you wanna control your spectrum. We're 20 times cheaper. No operation, expensive electricity and a lot cheaper initial investment.

Michael:   45:22
It was curious about the stretching years of it and moving on tow more potential applications off your quantum dots, the one that I found that the website which intrigues me, is the idea off having similar films to the ones you use on green houses. But on the windows, off buildings and using they were going to change the lines, but also to transform some of that like into electricity for improving the energy efficiency off buildings. It's a bit more explained how the process works, what the potential gain says, or how much energy could the building actually produce? And where are you in the application of this technology?

Hunter McDaniel:   46:01
Yeah, so this is really an offshoot of the work that was being done at Lund National Laboratory. It's one of the main focuses of the group that I was in to develop solar window technology using quantum dots. And so it's been a long time in development and currently, um, it's funded by the National Science Foundation, So I have to give them Ah, a shot out here. I'm very grateful for their support. Wait, basically, works is that, um, you content the window with a luminescent material. Quantum dots are good example of that. They absorb partially the sunlight, but then they let also some of the sunlight passed through, like a normal window tent would, if you take your window, like for a car or, you know, for a building, Um, normally you're just throwing away that light that darkens the window. It's just absorbed, and that energy is converted to heat. Or in some cases there's a reflective layer. And then the light is reflected a way to make the window darker, and that's usually used to prevent the inside from getting too hot, prevent solar heat gain and are the idea with with when you attend the window with quantum dots or a luminous and material is that absorbed energy. Um is then converted to a luminescence to this glow very efficiently, and then that energy can be guided to small solar cells somewhere else, not blocking the window. Um, so it's a way to generate electricity from partial Trent personally transparent window. Um, otherwise, he'd have to basically put it. If you want to generate electricity from the facade of the building, you have to put solar cells either on the roof or on the side of the building. The roof is really good for a short building where, you know the rooftop can actually supply enough energy to power a few stories. But as you go into taller buildings or urban centers, um, there's just very small footprint of the roof relative to the energy demands of the building. And then, additionally, that rooftop becomes increasingly valuable for leisure spaces or H vac systems. And as you look down the side of a building facades of buildings and cities, it's all glass. So it's a it's the story is really about powering cities. It's about urban solar. Um, it's about tall buildings, and there's a huge potential there. We've done a lot of modeling in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to get a sense of how much impact in this technology have, and for you no way. Look, a tall buildings, Um, but you could get up to about 30 to 40% of a typical skyscrapers. Energy demand from this technology if you deploy it at about a 50% window tent and that takes into account the directionality. You know, the style facing side being much better, Um, in the in the winter, um, in the summer that Houston West become comparable depending on where the building is located. Of course, if it's at the equator, all the side to be more equal. So we factor all that sort of stuff in end up being, um could be several gigawatts, um, gigawatt hours of annual production. And that equates to on the art of, like, 30 to 40%. So actually make energy neutral buildings, um, you have, which, which is a big goal in Europe, not as much in the United States, but carbon neutral building that produces as much as it consumes. You have to also attack it from the energy efficiency utilization side. So have led lights and energy efficient smart E h vac systems and all that sort of stuff. And then, you know, really good insulation. And when you put it all together combined, sort of all the best technologies together, then you get to energy neutrality, and that's that's the big vision there. Um, so where we're at, you know, still in R and D mode. We're deploying our first pilots. We have three before pilots queued up for this year, we're making windows up to about a square meter in size. We changed the color naturally. Um, instead of guiding light to plants with their optimal color, which looks like it's orange, the cross, our studies is this orange color. Um, most people don't want to have an orange glowing building, but we can

Michael:   50:00
make it there Some article where I live. Well,

Hunter McDaniel:   50:06
we had a request for building in Vegas like they're like, Can you do red gold windows? And

Michael:   50:11
we're like, Well, you could do the red

Hunter McDaniel:   50:13
part and then, you know,

Michael:   50:14
with the right

Hunter McDaniel:   50:14
coating metal metallic coating, it could look gold.

Michael:   50:17
We should be pretty

Hunter McDaniel:   50:17
cool, but the the window industry wants color neutral, basically gray like a true gray color, maybe even a little bit of a bluish gray. Um, and we can make pretty close to that. That's something we've been working hard on. But if we shift the mission, you know, outside the visible, just keep going to the red and then deep Brad and then eventually get to the near infrared, and that's invisible to the eye. So if it's glowing and there's some loss because the lights glowing, persistent, say from the front face to the glass, which we don't want to happen. But if that happens, you wouldn't see it. And then also that near our light is tuned to be optimized for solar cell efficiency. Zo'or. So it's kind of like a leaf. In a sense, it takes sunlight and then convert that into, you know, a useful energy that, in the case of a solar cell, comes out as a power. Electrical power output, in the case of planet goes into building, you know, biomass to photosynthesis. Um, but there's a certain color of that absorb. Er, in the case of, uh, we already talked about plants. It's chlorophyll, but and solar cells, it's a semiconductor like silicon, um, gallium, arsenide or whatever. Anyway, so we can tune that with a quantum dots to be optimized. And this, um, this guiding of light through the glass just comes as you know, sometimes you get lucky in nature that things work out, and this is an example of that where if you just couple a luminous material to a sheet of glass or any wave guide plane or wave guide, about 70% of the light is gonna get trapped inside of it by total internal reflection the same way that fiber optics work. And so, without trying that hard, you can get the luminescence to stay in the glass until it reaches the edges. And you can. There's clever ways of couple in the light back out on the edge. So that part isn't is hard. You do have to get a good quality, you know, composite with the dots, and you have to have really good quality glass, that sort of thing. But, um but that comes sort of free with this, um, that this approach is the guiding.

Michael:   52:12
So to two things and one is presumably the shaded windows also contribute to some energy efficiency rate because you're blocking out some sunlight. So you're cooling. Needs are our lesson today assumes that, correct?

Hunter McDaniel:   52:26
Yeah, It depends on the season in the climate and more colder climates. They want that he gained whereas in, um, warmer, more equatorial climate, they wantto reject our

Michael:   52:37
brave.

Hunter McDaniel:   52:37
Keep that energy out.

Michael:   52:39
Right? Right, right. Yeah, but But then the other

Hunter McDaniel:   52:42
factored in. Yeah,

Michael:   52:44
and then the other pieces. Of course, your your windows might cost more. Um, but you're not buying other windows. In other words, you're you're getting kind of a twofer. You're paying for some solar electricity, and you're paying for your windows with the same capital cost. It's not. It's different from its not apples to apples with comparing it to buying windows and putting on PVS panels on your roof.

Hunter McDaniel:   53:08
Yeah, that's right. So we leverage a lot of the infrastructure that's already going to be deployed. The fact that they're already putting glass in a frame, Um, you know, in a window into the into place, we leverage that with our technology trend and try to be an ad additive. Um, like a drop in solution. Whereas if you're asking someone to put solar cells on the roof, you know there's our summer examples, I guess, of the solar cell. Acting is a roof, but it's an additional cost, kind of like our first product in the greenhouse market. If you can go directly into the facade itself, into the window into the roof into the skin of a greenhouse, then you have an obvious opportunity to get cost down even further. And when it comes to solar, it's all about really having low cost at this point, because there's there's ways of producing electricity. You could put, um, some ourselves out in the desert, right and then have, um, transmission lines just run into the city. Why not do that? Well, there's the cost of the transmission lines is the loss. Those aren't that expensive, so you really have to be competitive with grid scale electricity. And that's what makes the solar window market So tough is just how cost sensitive it is, Um, and also being able to make you manufacture it at scale. But that goes into the cost to

Michael:   54:24
right, Marco. Anything else for we take it home? No, that's thinking, Homer. So Hunter Hunter, we usually wrap wrap up our our conversations with something about, you know, looking to the future. Give us give us something philosophical about where this market's going. And given the heavy emphasis on, uh, tech progress in R and D, and all the different applications of Q D, tell us a little bit about what we can expect to 20 years from now in ah, in the queue, derail what's being worked done in the lab now, are you know, either in your lab or in competitors labs are in the the corporate, the national lab system rather that we can expect to come out in the next couple of decades.

Hunter McDaniel:   55:13
Well, I'm a materials guy, so I'm gonna spend everything in that in that in that way, I feel like every major technological advancement and civilization has come about from advances in materials and, you know, over the it's sad because in my my perspective is, over the past 10 years or so, materials have been out of favor from the investment community. You don't see a lot of high flying startup successful startups that, but were built around materials. Um, it's more the software, you know, uh, suffers the service or absent stuff. And so But I do think that in an Internet and and all of our cell phones and computers all came from advancements in the semiconductor industry being able to make these microchips and intel on others being able to push the envelope a ce faras computing power. And then all of a sudden, um, the most valuable companies are the ones that were able to leverage that. I mean, you still have intel and, um, IBM and such around. But the most valuable companies aren't them, but it's cos they're about leverage, that technology, anything that's still gonna be the case going forward is that the next major technology advancements in society are going to be ultimately driven by materials. And one of the the key, you know, frontiers is around Anna materials. I do. I'm very passionate about what men and materials can do for society and what they'll enable. And energy is just where you know, I'm I'm personally passionate about. So my perspective is that advanced materials are going to ultimately bring the cost of energy down to being almost negligible, where we don't really even I think about it, kind of like, you know, you don't think about we don't pay anything for the oxygen that we breathe. Um, but even water, we kind of take for granted that you know, it's not a big portion of our utility bill for most people. Um and we're not very efficient with it because it's so abundant. Um, energy is going to be the same way. I think we'll have energy production embedded in everywhere. He'll be ubiquitous. Um, well, have energy very efficiently utilized a swell, so we won't need it. Need energy as much. Um, in some sense. And a lot of that's gonna be driven by advancements in materials for batteries, in advancements for energy production, new ways of deploying solar lower cost solar, um, an agriculture ways of utilizing the sunlight directly without having to power those lamps, but still maintain that control. You have to game the evolution effectively, have crops to produce. You know, all this food for the, um, you know, the billions of people of 10 million people that are gonna be on this planet and 2050. So I think materials and their particular nano materials are gonna be everywhere. They're already almost that. It's almost like that. And that's gonna lead to the next, um, industrial revolution, ultimately on the back of free energy or very low cost energy.

Michael:   57:58
That's it. That's it. That's great. Free energy, quantum dot Yeah. I give you

Hunter McDaniel:   58:07
what? One word. One word? Yeah, well, you know, trying to play on the ah, the

Michael:   58:17
end of

Hunter McDaniel:   58:17
one of the beginning of the graduate. You know, when when been there having a graduation party for bin and they take him aside enough. You've seen that movie. And

Michael:   58:24
when has

Hunter McDaniel:   58:24
been Dad's friend Dustin Hoffman

Michael:   58:26
last deciding one word

Hunter McDaniel:   58:28
for you. One

Michael:   58:29
word. Hubbell Last text. Beauty.

Marco:   58:38
Love it. All right, well, 100 Gail, Thank you so much. That's been a great conversation. Thanks

Michael:   58:43
for that biking, Marco. Thank you. In touch, I guess,

Marco:   58:48
thanks to the folks over it, Possibly for editing this episode. Pod Bleed is an affordable podcast editing service focused on making podcasting more accessible by offering all in one podcast editing starting at just $20 per episode. We learned the hard way that audio editing is one of the most time consuming parts of podcasting process. That's why we're now using possibly headed our shows. Check them out at dot dot com. That's pod lead dot com. Tell them, and for EJ