Research Bits: March 21


Micropatterning with sugar A scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) discovered a transfer printing process that can deposit microcircuit patterns on curved and textured surfaces using sugar candy. Transfer printing methods, such as flexible tapes, are often used for surfaces that are difficult to directly print on. But they have difficulty with conforming to ... » read more

Technical Paper Round-Up: June 28


New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. [table id=35 /] Semiconductor Engineering is in the process of building this library of research papers. Please send suggestions (via comments section below) for what else you’d like us to incorporate. If you have research papers you are trying to promote, we will review them to see if they are a good fit f... » read more

Quantum Batteries Constructed of a Microcavity Enclosing a Molecular Dye


Research paper titled "Superabsorption in an organic microcavity: Toward a quantum battery" from researchers at University of Adelaide (Australia), University of Sheffield (UK), Politecnico di Milano (Italy), University of St Andrews (UK), and Heriot-Watt University. Abstract (Partial) "Here, we implement experimentally a paradigmatic model of a quantum battery, constructed of a microcavity... » read more

What Quantum Batteries Have in Store


Quantum battery technology is approaching an inflection point similar to the one quantum computing crossed a decade or so ago, escalating it from a theoretical curiosity to an engineering challenge worth solving. Quantum batteries exploit the strange physical laws of the very small — the quantum world — to gain performance advantages over classical batteries. Recent research on charging ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 9


Open-source EUV resist metrology Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) has developed an open-source software technology for scanning electron microscopy (SEM) applications. The technology is targeted for EUV resist metrology. The technology, called SMILE (SEM-Measured Image Lines Estimator), is an open source software technology, which characterizes line and space patterns in a SEM. SMILE is used t... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 4


Non-targeted analysis Using a technology called machine learning, the Southwest Research Institute has introduced a software tool that detects known and unknown chemical components in food, air and drugs. It detects compounds in products we are exposed to every day using both machine learning and metrology techniques. A subset of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning uses advanced ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 27


Hybrid solar for hydrogen and electricity Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed an artificial photosynthesis solar cell capable of both storing the sun's energy as hydrogen through water splitting and outputting electricity directly. The hybrid photoelectrochemical and voltaic (HPEV) cell gets around a limitation of other water splitting devices that shortchange... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: April 17


Flexible LCDs Researchers at Donghua University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology developed a flexible, optically rewriteable LCD for paperlike displays. The team estimates it will be cheap to produce, perhaps only costing $5 for a 5-inch screen. Optically rewriteable LCDs, like conventional LCDs, are structured like a sandwich, with a liquid crystal filling between two ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 10


Singing to your storage Existing research on 'racetrack memory', which uses tiny magnetic wires, each one hundreds of times thinner than a human hair, down which magnetic bits of data run like racing cars around a track, has focused on using either magnetic fields or electric currents to move the data bits down the wires. However, both these options create heat and reduce power efficiency. ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Aug. 19


Spray-on power In a discovery that could help cut the cost of solar electricity, a team of scientists at the University of Sheffield has fabricated perovskite solar cells using a spray-painting process. The researchers had used the spray-painting method previously to produce solar cells using organic semiconductors - but using perovskite is a major step forward, they asserted. Efficient ... » read more