Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 17


Implantable TFETs At the recent IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in Washington, D.C., a number of companies, R&D organizations and universities described new breakthroughs in perhaps the next big thing in semiconductors--the tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET). Aimed for the 5nm node, TFETs are steep sub-threshold slope transistors that can scale the supply voltages bel... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 29


Diamond chips The optical transistor, which transports photons, holds great promise. Photons are not only faster than electrons, but they have less crosstalk. But optical transistors are also expensive and difficult to produce. In a possible breakthrough, the ICFO-Institute of Photonic Sciences has demonstrated a “nano-size” diamond that can act as an efficient optical switch. Researche... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 22


Natural lithography For years, researchers have been exploring the development of nanosphere lithography or natural lithography. Nanosphere lithography makes use of directed self-assembly (DSA) techniques. The process begins with self-assembly of a nanosphere mask onto a substrate. This is followed by deposition of a material through the mask. The University of Paderborn has put a new twis... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 10


Rock Around The Clock National Institute of Standards and Technology’s two experimental atomic clocks have set a new record for stability. Resembling a pendulum or metronome, NIST’s atomic clocks can swing back and forth with perfect timing for a period comparable to the age of the universe. The clocks are based on ytterbium atoms. The clock ticks are stable to within less than two part... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 3


Dancing With The Stars In telescopes, the ability to see distant stars and galaxies is driven by the light-gathering area and detectors in the system. In the last 50 years, the collecting area in large-scale telescopes has increased by only a factor of four, according to researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of CCD detectors has increased... » read more

Changing Opinions About Noise


By Brian Fuller On a sunny, warm May day in 2009, NIST researcher Jason Campbell took the stage at an IEEE event in Austin with a presentation that was sure cast a pall over the booming low-power semiconductor world. Campbell’s paper, written with Liangchun Yu, Kin Cheung, Jin Qin, John S. Suehle, A. Oates, Kuang Sheng, was entitled “Large Random Telegraph Noise in Sub-Threshold Opera... » read more

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