Measuring Atoms And Beyond


David Seiler, chief of the Engineering Physics Division within the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss the current and future directions of metrology. NIST, a physical science laboratory, is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: W... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 23


Rolling Out Solar Power...Literally An International team of researchers have developed solar cells that can be added onto a roll of flexible plastic in liquid form, bringing the same kind of economies of production to the solar industry as rolls of paper and ink did for newspapers more than a century ago. Using a roll-to-roll processing method, the team was able to achieve a power conversi... » read more

zeroK NanoTech: FIB Circuit Edit


Focused ion beam (FIB) circuit editing is an enabling technology that has been around for some time. Using a standard FIB tool, a chipmaker can basically edit portions of a circuit before it goes into production. It allows chipmakers to debug chips, cut traces, add metal connections and perform other functions. One startup, zeroK NanoTech, is putting a new and innovative twist on FIB circui... » read more

Waiting For Next-Gen Metrology


Chipmakers continue to march down the various process nodes, but the industry will require new breakthroughs to extend IC scaling at 10nm and beyond. In fact, the industry will require innovations in at least two main areas—patterning and the [getkc id="36" comment="Interconnect"]. There are other areas of concern, but one technology is quickly rising near the top of the list—metrology.... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 12


Origami Robots It may sound like something out of the movie Transformers, but MIT and Harvard have created origami robots that be reconfigured using timed sequencing. The robots were built from laser-cut parts using five layers of materials. A layer of etched copper is embedded between two structural layers of paper, with outer layers made of a polymer that folds when heated, according to... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 3


Dancing With The Stars In telescopes, the ability to see distant stars and galaxies is driven by the light-gathering area and detectors in the system. In the last 50 years, the collecting area in large-scale telescopes has increased by only a factor of four, according to researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of CCD detectors has increased... » read more