System Bits: June 23


Magnifying motions indiscernible to the naked eye For several years now, the research groups of MIT professors of computer science and engineering William Freeman and Frédo Durand have been investigating techniques for amplifying movements captured by video but indiscernible to the human eye. Versions of their algorithms can make the human pulse visible and even recover intelligible speech fr... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 23


Printing 3D circuits from wood Researchers at Chalmers created three-dimensional objects made entirely of cellulose for the first time with the help of a 3D-bioprinter. They also added carbon nanotubes to create electrically conductive material. The difficulty using cellulose derived from wood in additive manufacturing is that cellulose does not melt when heated. Therefore, the 3D printer... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 23


Diamond shock waves For years, the industry has been exploring the use of diamonds for electronics applications. Diamonds could be used to reduce heat in electronic systems. In addition, diamond FETs are also intriguing. Diamond has a wide bandgap (5.45 eV), a high breakdown field (10MV/cm), and high thermal conductivity (22W/cmK). But it could take years before diamond FETs reach the mains... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 16


Lighting up graphene A team of scientists from Columbia University, Seoul National University, and Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science demonstrated an on-chip visible light source using graphene as a filament. They attached small strips of graphene to metal electrodes, suspended the strips above the substrate, and passed a current through the filaments to cause them to heat up.... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 16


Harmonic EUV The U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has devised an efficient extreme ultraviolet (EUV) source. The technology could one day be used for a new class of metrology tools, based on angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). This technique makes use of a photoelectric effect for studying materials. To enable the source, Berkeley Labs devel... » read more

System Bits: June 16


Origami robot At the recent International Conference on Robotics and Automation, MIT researchers presented a printable origami robot that folds itself up from a flat sheet of plastic when heated and measures about a centimeter from front to back. The robot weighs just a third of a gram, and can swim, climb an incline, traverse rough terrain, and carry a load twice its weight. Other than the... » read more

System Bits: June 9


Optical constraints Stanford University researchers have discovered strong constraints to optical data transmission but hope it can guide future research in this area. As a reminder, optics, a form of data transmission that utilizes beams of light, has the promise to outperform the beams of electrons that drive computers or smartphones. And as engineers have long looked for a way to miniatu... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 9


Building foam batteries out of trees A method for making elastic high-capacity batteries from wood pulp was unveiled by researchers in Sweden and the US. Using nanocellulose broken down from tree fibers, a team from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stanford University produced an elastic, foam-like battery material that can withstand shock and stress. "It is possible to make incredib... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 9


Making rare earths Rare earths are chemical elements found in the Earth’s crust. They are used in cars, consumer electronics, computers, communications, clean energy and defense systems. The big market for rare earths is magnets. In semiconductor production, rare earths are used in high-k dielectrics, CMP slurries and other applications. China has a monopoly in rare earths, accounting for... » read more

System Bits: June 2


Subcutaneous medicine chip A biosensor chip developed at EPFL is capable of simultaneously monitoring the concentration of a number of molecules, such as glucose and cholesterol, and certain drugs. It’s only a centimeter long, placed under a patient’s skin, powered by a patch on the surface of the skin, and communicates with a mobile phone. [caption id="attachment_20134" align="alig... » read more

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