Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 9


Smaller, cheaper integrated photonics Researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) developed a way to integrate an optical frequency comb on a silicon photonic chip. Optical frequency combs are collections of equally spaced frequencies of laser light (so called because when pl... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 26


Vitamin C chips Using vitamin C, Rice University has developed a process that turns gold nanorods into small gold nanowires. Nanorods are a type of structure, while nanowires are simply tiny wires. With the technology, Rice is able to produce nanowires with various lengths. These can be used in electronics as well as light-manipulating applications like plasmons. A “plasmon is a quantum o... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 6


FISH metrology The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Mayo Clinic have developed a new molecular probe for use in imaging cells in living organisms. The probe combines conventional fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) metrology techniques with compact quantum dots. This technology can measure and count ribonucleic acid (RNA) in cells and tissue without organic dyes. ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: March 13


Gallium oxide substrates Kyma Technologies has rolled out a substrate line based on crystalline beta-phase gallium oxide (β-Ga2O3) materials. [caption id="attachment_24132458" align="alignleft" width="300"] Single crystal gallium oxide (ß-Ga2O3) substrates (Source: Kyma)[/caption] Crystalline beta gallium oxide is a promising wide bandgap semiconductor material. It has a large bandgap... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 12


3D diodes At the recent IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) presented a paper on what they call the world’s first back-illuminated 3D-stacked, single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) in 45nm CMOS technology. A SPAD is one type of a photodetector. These... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: May 2


Patterning 1nm features The Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory has patterned features down to 1nm using a direct-write lithography technique. Using a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), researchers have patterned thin films of the polymer poly(methyl methacrylate), or PMMA, down to 1nm with a spacing between features at 11nm. Re... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: March 28


Storing solar energy as carbon monoxide A team at Indiana University engineered a molecule that collects and stores solar energy without solar panels. The molecule uses light or electricity to convert the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide more efficiently than any other method of carbon reduction. Burning fuel such as carbon monoxide produces carbon dioxide and releases e... » 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: Feb. 4


Lead halide perovskites Paving the way to the design of photovoltaic converters with improved efficiency, researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) said they have uncovered the mechanism by which solar cells based on lead iodide perovskite light-absorbing semiconductor transfer electrons along their surface. Photovoltaic systems based on lead halide perovskite are a n... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 21


Metamaterial modeling Metamaterials -- artificial materials engineered to have properties that are not normally found in nature and being explored in a number of technologies such as perfect lenses, antennas and terahertz devices – are becoming more important to model. Modeling them is a difficult task considering their unconventional nature and delicate properties but researchers from Ecole... » read more

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