Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 2


Better nanowire MOSFETs At the recent IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), Imec and Applied Materials presented a paper on a new and improved way to fabricate vertically stacked gate-all-around MOSFETs. More specifically, Imec and Applied reported on process improvements for a silicon nanowire MOSFET, which is integrated in a CMOS dual work function metal replacement metal ga... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 2


High-temp electronics Researchers at Purdue University, UC Santa Cruz, and Stanford developed a semiconducting plastic capable of operating at extreme temperatures. The new material, which combines both a semiconducting organic polymer and a conventional insulating organic polymer could reliably conduct electricity in up to 220 degrees Celsius (428 F). "One of the plastics transports the ch... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 2


Princeton plumbs blockchain technology Researchers at Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science are looking at how blockchain technology can provide secure financial transactions, among other applications. “Early on we realized this was a technology that was not well understood but that a lot of people were interested in,” says Ed Felten, the Robert E. Kahn Profess... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 26


Polymer pen litho Using a polymer pen lithography technique, the Air Force Research Laboratory and Northwestern University have developed a quick way to discover new materials. Researchers have developed a combinatorial library of tiny nanoparticles on a substrate. A combinatorial library, sometimes referred to as a megalibrary, is a collection of different structures. Each structure is enc... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 26


Adding learning to computer vision UCLA’s Samueli School of Engineering and Stanford University are working on advanced computer vision technology, using artificial intelligence to help vision systems learn to identify faces, objects and other things on their own, without training by humans. The research team breaks up images into chunks they call “viewlets,” then they have the computer ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 26


2nm memristors Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Brookhaven National Laboratory built memristor crossbar arrays with a 2nm feature size and a single-layer density up to 4.5 terabits per square inch. The team says the arrays were built with foundry-compatible fabrication technologies. "This work will lead to high-density memristor arrays with low power consumption fo... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 18


Gallium oxide breakthroughs Crystalline beta gallium oxide is a promising wide bandgap semiconductor material. It has a large bandgap of 4.8–4.9 eV with a high breakdown field of 8 MV/cm. The technology has a high voltage figure of merit, which is more than 3,000 times greater than silicon, more than 8 times greater than silicon carbide (SiC) and more than 4 times greater than that of... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 18


Solar storage Engineers at MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory designed a system to store renewable energy in vast amounts and deliver it back to the grid when power generation is low. The system stores excess electricity from solar or wind installations as heat using tanks of white-hot molten silicon, and then converts the light from the glowi... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 18


AI studies at Stanford Language processing is a leading area in artificial intelligence research, Stanford University reports. “We’re trying to inform the conversation about artificial intelligence with hard data,” says Yoav Shoham, professor of computer science, emeritus, adding, “Language is the ultimate frontier of AI research because you can express any thought or idea in langua... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 11


FinFET vs. FD-SOI pH sensors At the recent 2018 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), TSMC and National Tsing Hua University presented a paper on an ion detector or pH sensor based on a 16nm finFET technology. Researchers have developed an advanced version of an ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (ISFET). Originally developed in the 1970s, ISFETs are pH sensors that are use... » read more

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