Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 6


Vertical SiC chips for electric cars Silicon carbide (SiC) is a promising material for power electronics. The material has a high breakdown voltage, high operating temperatures and a superior thermal conductivity. At the recent 2014 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, Toyota, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and the... » read more

One-On-One: Jeffrey Schloss


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about genomics, DNA sequencing and semiconductor technologies with Jeffery Schloss, director of the Division of Genome Sciences at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). The NHGRI is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. SE: The NHGRI is involved in several projects... » read more

DNA Sequencing Device Market Heats Up


Slightly more than a decade ago an international consortium reached a major milestone by sequencing the human genome. Using laboratory systems called DNA sequencers, the Human Genome Project (HGP) determined the order of nearly 3 billion base pairs that make up the human genome. This, in turn, was supposed to pave the way to prevent, treat and cure diseases. Then, in early 2014, Illumina hit... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 28


Making graphene from cooked sawdust The University of Birmingham has found a new and cheap way to make nanostructured carbon materials, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene. The magic formula? Common sawdust. Sawdust is made up of cellulose and lignin. Researchers can convert this biomass material into nanostructured graphitic carbon in a single step. [caption id="attachment_15639" alig... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 28


More powerful, sensitive wearables With their special electronic and optical properties, nanomaterials such as graphene and molybdenum sulfide have created excitement among UCLA scientists for their potential to revolutionize transistors and circuits. Research is underway there that has the potential to increase the efficiency and capabilities of the 2D layered semiconductors used in high-s... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 21


Simplified superconducting circuits Computer chips with superconducting circuits, which means they have no electrical resistance, are said to be 50 to 100 times as energy-efficient as today’s technology. Superconducting chips are also said to have greater processing power: Superconducting circuits that use so-called Josephson junctions have been clocked at 770 gigahertz, or 500 times the spe... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 16


Making sounds with atoms What is the sound of one hand clapping? Perhaps a better question is what is the sound of an atom? Chalmers University of Technology has demonstrated the ability to make a sound with an atom. More specifically, researchers have made acoustic waves with an artificial atom. In doing so, researchers have demonstrated quantum physics with sound taking on the role of lig... » read more

More Problems Ahead


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss future scaling problems with Lars Liebmann, a fellow at IBM; Adam Brand, managing director of transistor technology at Applied Materials; Karim Arabi, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm; and Srinivas Banna, a fellow for advanced technology architecture at GlobalFoundries. SE: Where are the most severe issues these days? Is it on the design... » read more

System Bits: Sept. 9


First transistor-based flexible device with graphene A flexible display incorporating graphene in its pixels’ electronics has been successfully demonstrated by the Cambridge Graphene Centre and Plastic Logic, the first time graphene has been used in a transistor-based flexible device. The prototype is meant to be a first step towards the wider implementation of graphene and graphene-like ... » read more

System Bits: Aug. 19


Revealing the purity of graphene Graphene may be tough, but those who handle it had better be tender, according to researchers from Rice University and Osaka University who have come up with a simple way to spot contaminants given that the environment surrounding the atom-thick carbon material can influence its electronic performance. It is so easy to accidentally introduce impurities into ... » read more

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