Sunpower, Inc.

Sunpower, Inc. is a world-leading designer, developer and manufacturer of Stirling cycle cryocoolers. Our differentiated free-piston technology provides the combined advantages of high efficiency, small size, light weight, high reliability and long life.

Experties and Products/available facilities

Sunpower’s CryoTel® cryocoolers that are available for sale are the result of nearly five decades of technical leadership, innovation and evolution in free-piston Stirling technology. The CryoTel family of products offer cryogenic cooling down to 30 K and from 1 to 30 W of capacity for the following markets:

  • Aerospace and astronomy
  • Energy and environment
  • Industrial and manufacturing
  • Medical, pharmaceutical and life sciences
  • Research and academia

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Applications

Applications for Sunpower CryoTel cryocoolers include:

  • Biomedical freezing, storage, and transportation
  • Cryotherapy
  • High temperature superconductivity, magnetic levitation and motors
  • Gas liquefaction, re-liquefaction and thermal shields
  • Infrared and nuclear radiation detectors
  • Low noise amplifiers
  • Cryopumps, cold traps and gas concentration
  • Laser cooling
  • Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
  • Quantum physics
  • Petroleum testing
  • Imaging, spectrometry, spectroscopy and chromatography

Recent developments

CryoTel GTLT
For applications that require a lower base temperature, or additional cooling around 30-40 K, Sunpower is working on the release of the GTLT. This lower-temperature version of the CryoTel GT is the same physical envelope as the GT but makes changes to materials and regenerator optimization to increase low-end performance. These changes now offer a no-load temperature of 28 K or lower, with ~1 W of cooling at 30 K and ~3 W of cooling at 35 K. Sunpower intends to release the GTLT by Q3 of 2021.

2nd Generation AVC
For applications that require an Active Vibration Cancellation system for legacy cryocoolers yet expose the cooler to harsh vibrational and acceleration environments, Sunpower will be releasing the Gen 2 AVC. The primary motivator for the change was to improve the structural integrity of the AVC for space flight launch environments. However, since the Gen 2 AVC now has a perimeter mount and a center-moving mass, it also offers significant exported vibration mitigation performance improvement over the commercial AVC. The Gen 2 AVC can also be used with certain DS 30 configurations. The Gen 2 AVC design also offers encapsulation in a hermetic shell to allow operation in a vacuum with improved heat rejection. Sunpower intends to release the Gen 2 AVC by Q3 of 2021.