The incredible shrinking transformer

Grad student’s work uses a spray-on technology that he pursued with classmates in an engineering course last year taught by professors Gregory Crawford and Eric Suuberg.

by Kristen Cole

When graduate student Gregory Berguig was a preschooler, his grandfather gave him a train set along with a hefty transformer to convert the electricity from the wall outlet to a lower level that would power the engine around the track.

Berguig (left) is now researching ways to miniaturize the transformers that convert voltage to levels that will power electronic devices that are integral parts of our daily lives.

Consider the black boxy transformers that help charge laptop computers or cell phones. Then consider the possibilities for a transformer shrunk so small that it could be applied to the surface of an electronic device in the way spray paint is applied to a surface.

Berguig’s efforts toward the creation of, and uses for, a flat spray-on transformer will be displayed March 22 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Boston Museum of Science during an event spotlighting innovative creations by 15 groups of college students around the nation.

The event, “March Madness for the Mind,” is an annual collaboration between the museum and the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). Berguig will be at the museum to describe his project, called “Conformance Solutions.”

“These students are transforming the future with their innovations,” said Phil Weilerstein, executive director of the NCIIA. “The act of turning a creative idea into an innovative and viable product – while still in school – represents a new movement in education that gives students the opportunity to build the skills they need to be successful in a dynamic, collaborative workplace.”

Berguig’s project started last year as a group effort in an engineering course taught by professors Gregory Crawford and Eric Suuberg, and is now the topic of his graduate thesis, under adviser Crawford.

In the course, Berguig and six other undergraduates were given information about a new spray-on technology called Direct Write Thermal Spray and were asked to brainstorm commercial applications for it. The spray is made of small particles with electronic components that, when applied, are twice the width of a human hair.

“I was responsible to see if people would be interested if we made a sprayed-on transformer,” said Berguig. “I found enough interest.”

Although most group members disbanded after the course ended, Berguig and two other students who graduated last May, Adrian Kaplan and Anjali Tuljapurkar, continued brainstorming applications. The three spent the summer at Stony Brook University in New York, where the engineering department had first developed Direct Write Thermal Spray and was searching for commercial applications.

Toward the end of the summer, Berguig used a grant from the NCIIA to continue the research while in graduate school.

Compared to a standard transformer, a thermally sprayed transformer is easier to manufacture because the spray product does not require the assembly that transformers currently require, Berguig said. In addition, performance improves with a transformer fully enclosed in a spray, and there is less electromagnetic radiation, which interferes with other devices.

Above all, the size of the spray-on transformer appears to be the most significant benefit for a product as common as the transformer.

The transformer’s importance is obvious in Berguig’s life. Although the train from his grandfather is now tucked away in a box, the transformer is not: Berguig uses it to operate his stereo, which was manufactured for use in another country and needs the transformer to work here.