Power/Performance Bits: June 15


Low-loss photonic IC Researchers at EPFL built a photonic integrated circuit with ultra-low loss. The team focused on silicon nitride (Si3N4), which has orders of magnitude lower optical loss compared to silicon. It is used in low-loss applications such as narrow-linewidth lasers, photonic delay lines, and nonlinear photonics. In applying the material to photonic ICs, they took advantage... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: May 4


Measuring Moon dust The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and others have developed a new way to study and measure moon dust. Using an X-ray nano computed tomography (XCT) technique, researchers measured the 3D shapes of lunar particles as small as 400nm in length. The goal is to find out how these shapes impact the optical scattering characteristics of lunar dust on the... » read more

Going Vertical With GaN Devices


Gallium nitride has long been on the horizon for a variety of uses in semiconductors, but implementing this on a commercial scale has been relatively slow due to a variety of technical hurdles. That may be about to change. The wide bandgap of GaN makes it particularly attractive material for power conversion applications. Still, actually realizing its benefits in commercial devices has been ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: March 23


Measuring acceleration The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a new and better way to measure acceleration. NIST has developed an optomechanical accelerometer, a technology that has more resolution and bandwidth than conventional accelerometers. Optomechanical accelerometers uses laser light of a known frequency to measure acceleration. With the technology, ... » read more

Chasing After Carbon Nanotube FETs


Carbon nanotube transistors are finally making progress for potential use in advanced logic chips after nearly a quarter century in R&D. The question now is whether they will move out of the lab and into the fab. Several government agencies, companies, foundries, and universities over the years have been developing, and are now making advancements with carbon nanotube field-effect transi... » read more

The Chip Industry’s Next-Gen Roadmap


Todd Younkin, the new president and chief executive of the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC), sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about engineering careers, R&D trends and what’s ahead for chip technologies over the next decade. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: As a U.S.-based chip consortium, what is SRC's charter? Younkin: The Semiconductor Research... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 11


3D printing with liquids Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) has developed a way to combine both materials and liquids in 3D printing applications. Researchers from MLU have developed liquid‐filled capsules using 3D printing technology. This in turn enables new medical agents to be incorporated into pharmaceutical products. It also allows liquids to be integrated into material... » read more

IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020


The "IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020" became a U.S. law on 12/4/2020.   The legislation was passed by unanimous consent by the Senate and the House of Representatives. Congress.Gov states: "This bill requires the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to take specified steps to increase cybersecurity for Internet of ... » read more

Electronics Supply-Chain Trust Standards Emerge


Creative new ideas for electronics supply-chain trust are in rich supply, whether securing identity, protecting logistics, or establishing provenance. But underlying these efforts are wide-ranging standards in development from a broad set of organizations. Today, no one-stop-shop for supply-chain standards exists. Instead, there is huge fragmentation. It can be difficult to identify all of t... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive/Mobility China-based Great Wall Motor (GWM) will use Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon Ride Platform to create a semi-autonomous driving system that will be in higher-end production vehicles in 2022, according to a press release. GWM is creating a L2+ and L3 driving systems with multiple high-res cameras and multi-source heterogenous sensors, using Snapdragon Ride Platform, which ... » read more

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