The following article is an edited version of the Von Hippel Award address, given by recipient Gabor A. Somorjaiat the 1997 MRS Fall Meeting. Somorjai received the Materials Research Society's highest honor for “his extraordinary multidisciplinary contributions to the atomic-level understanding of materials surfaces and surface processes with technological importance in hetergeneous catalysis, corrosion, and tribology.”

The following is an edited transcript from the 1997 David Turnbull Lectureship presentation given by Merton C. Flemings at the 1997 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting. Flemings was cited for “his contributions to the foundations and technology of solidification processing and for educating a generation of materials engineers.”

The following article, originally published in Materials Research Society Proceedings Volume 482, is based on the address that Shuji Nakamura, recipient of an MRS Medal Award, presented during Symposium X of the 1997 MRS Fall Meeting. Nakamura was recognized for “the development of lattice-mismatched GaN based heteroepitaxy and its application to the creation of blue and green light-emitting diodes and short wave-length laser diodes.”

On April 13, 1982, the Duke Power Company energized an experimental pad-mount distribution transformer in Hickory, North Carolina. The transformer, manufactured by General Electric, provided electric power to a local residence. That same month, the Georgia Power Company installed a similar transformer, made by Westinghouse Electric, atop a utility pole in Athens, Georgia. It supplied electricity for the exterior lights at the Westinghouse Newton Bridge Road plant. These devices shown in Figure 1 were unique among the nearly 40 million distribution transformers in service in the United States because their magnetic cores were made from an Fe–B–Si amorphous-metal alloy. This new material, produced by Allied-Signal (formerly Allied Chemical), was capable of magnetizing more efficiently than any electrical steel. By replacing grain-oriented silicon steel in the transformer cores, the amorphous metal reduced the core losses of the transformers by 75%.

Although distribution transformers are relatively efficient devices, often operating at efficiencies as high as 99% at full load, they lose a significant amount of energy in their use. Because of the number of units in service, coupled with the fact that the core material is continuously magnetized and demagnetized at line frequency, transformers account for the largest portion of the energy losses on electric power distribution systems. It is estimated that over 50 × 109 kWh are dissipated annually in the United States in the form of distribution transformer core losses. At today's average electricity generating cost of $0.035/kWh, that energy is worth over $1,500 million.