Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Joby Aviation and Alef Automotive each received a Special Airworthiness Certificate from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Joby will now begin flight testing the prototype, and the aircraft will move to Edwards Air Force Base in 2024 as part of a contract with the U.S. Air Force. Alef’s model is the first U.S. govern... » read more

Research Bits: Feb. 14


Defining Kagome superconductors An international team of scientists and researchers from the Brown University lab are now able to describe the structure of the superconductor Kagome metals. The team used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging and a quantum modeling theory to describe the microscopic structure as the metal changed states into a charge density wave (CDW) state at 103°Kelvin (... » read more

Chip Industry’s Technical Paper Roundup: Nov. 21


New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. [table id=65 /] » read more

Stabilizing A Hafnium Oxide-Based Thin Film When Sandwiched Between A Metal Substrate And An Electrode


A technical paper titled "Origin of Ferroelectric Phase Stabilization via the Clamping Effect in Ferroelectric Hafnium Zirconium Oxide Thin Films" was published by researchers at University of Virginia, Brown University, Sandia National Labs, and Oak Ridge National Lab. Funding was given by U.S. DOE's 3D Ferroelectric Microelectronics Energy Frontier Research Center and the SRC. "This study ... » read more

Research Bits: June 21


Side-channel protection for edge AI Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built a chip that can defend against power side-channel attacks targeting machine learning computations in smartwatches, smartphones, and tablets. Side-channel attacks involve observing a facet of the device's operation, in this case power, to deduce secrets. “The goal of this project is to buil... » read more

New Ways To Improve Batteries


Researchers around the world are racing to develop more efficient, denser, and safer battery technology, and they are reaching far beyond where research has gone before. Much of this is being driven by concern over exhaust from internal combustion engines, which are responsible for a significant portion of global CO2 emissions. Nearly all carmakers today have announced plans to develop batte... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: May 25


5G energy harvesting Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology propose a way to harvest power for IoT devices using 5G networks. The team's device uses a flexible Rotman lens-based rectifying antenna (rectenna) system capable of millimeter-wave harvesting in the 28-GHz band. “With this innovation, we can have a large antenna, which works at higher frequencies and can receive power fr... » read more

No Two Chips Are Alike


As semiconductor processes continue to shrink it’s becoming increasingly challenging to manage the parameters of individual devices not only across the diameter of the wafer, but also across the length of a single chip, especially for a complex chip with a large area. Today’s standard approach to this problem is to assume the worst case and to create a sub-optimal design that accommodates t... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: May 5


Spiking neural network radar chip Imec has developed what the R&D organization says is the world’s first chip that processes radar signals using a spiking recurrent neural network. Initially, the chip from Imec is designed for low-power, anti-collision radar systems in drones. Neural networks are used in the field of machine learning. A subset of AI, machine learning utilizes a neu... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: March 24


Autonomous microscopes FLEET, also known as the ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies, has developed an autonomous scanning probe microscopy (SPM) technology. SPM is an instrument that makes use of an atomically sharp probe. The probe is placed in close proximity above the surface of a sample. With the probe, the SPM forms images of the surface of the sample... » read more

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