Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 15


Strong plastics The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a new material that is stronger than steel but is light as plastic. The new material, which can be made in large quantities, involves a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets. The material’s Young modulus—or a measure of how much force it takes to deform a material—is between four and six times gr... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 7


Design tools for solid-state batteries Oak Ridge National Laboratory has devised a new tool designed to accelerate the development of energy-dense solid-state batteries. The tool, called the Solid-State Battery Performance Analyzer and Calculator (SolidPAC), enables researchers to assess the impact of battery designs and choice of cell components for solid-state batteries. It can be used to... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 25


Nanoscale 3D optics Researchers at Rice University and University of Houston are using 3D printing to build nanostructures of silica for micro-scale electronic, mechanical, and photonic devices. “It’s very tough to make complicated, three-dimensional geometries with traditional photolithography techniques,” said Jun Lou, a professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice. �... » read more

Reasserting U.S. Leadership in Microelectronics (MIT)


In this new paper, MIT researchers lay out a vision and approach for how universities can help the U.S. regain leadership as a semiconductor superpower. The paper looks at education and workforce development, research, technology translation, startups, intellectual property, academic infrastructure and regional network efficiencies. Find the paper here and the MIT news writeup from 1/19/2022... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 10


Finding new materials with inverse design The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) has found a new way to perform general inverse design, a technique that can accelerate the discovery of new materials. The concept of inverse design is simple. Let’s say you want to develop products with select materials. In a computer, you input the desired materials and the propertie... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 23


Capturing waste heat Researchers at Wuhan University and University of California Los Angeles developed a hydrogel that can both cool down electronics and convert the waste heat into electricity. The thermogalvanic hydrogel consists of a polyacrylamide framework infused with water and specific ions. When they heated the hydrogel, two of the ions (ferricyanide and ferrocyanide) transferred e... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 16


One-directional optical Researchers from University of Pennsylvania, Peking University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a design for optical devices that radiate light in only one direction, which could reduce energy consumption in optical fiber networks and data centers. Light tends to flow in a single direction optical fibers, but while most of the light passing through... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: May 26


Warmer quantum computing Researchers at the University of New South Wales Sydney, Université de Sherbrooke, Aalto University, and Keio University developed a proof-of-concept quantum processor unit cell on a silicon chip that works at 1.5 Kelvin – 15 times warmer than current chip-based technology that uses superconducting qubits. "This is still very cold, but is a temperature that can b... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: April 21


Memristors reappear The University of Massachusetts Amherst has taken a step towards of the realization of neuromorphic computing--it has devised bio-voltage memristors based on protein nanowires. In neuromorphic computing, the idea is to bring the memory closer to the processing tasks to speed up a system. For this, the industry is attempting to replicate the brain in silicon. The goal is ... » 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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