Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 23


Rolling Out Solar Power...Literally An International team of researchers have developed solar cells that can be added onto a roll of flexible plastic in liquid form, bringing the same kind of economies of production to the solar industry as rolls of paper and ink did for newspapers more than a century ago. Using a roll-to-roll processing method, the team was able to achieve a power conversi... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 26


Jumping films Riken and the University of Tokyo have developed a tiny autonomous actuator. The actuator, which is based on a special material, can automatically curl up or straighten out when exposed to ambient humidity. And in certain conditions, the film can even jump into the air by itself. A video can be seen here. Researchers placed a material called guanidinium carbonate into a hig... » read more

How To Build Systems In Package


The semiconductor industry is racing to define a series of road maps for semiconductors to succeed the one created by the ITRS, which will no longer be updated, including a brand new one focused on heterogeneous integration. The latest entry will establish technology targets for integration of heterogeneous multi-die devices and systems. It has the support of IEEE's Components, Packaging and... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 5


A foggy consortium Scientists at Princeton University, ARM, Cisco, Dell, Intel, and Microsoft formed a global effort to develop architectures and tools to further "fog computing" and networks, which aim to harness connected devices' own computing, sensing and storage power to form edge networks that meet most of the demand of user devices that are at the periphery of a more centralized netwo... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 8


Untraceable text-messaging Anonymity networks, like Tor, which sit on top of the public Internet, were meant to conceal Web-browsing habits but recent research by MIT has shown that adversaries can infer a great deal about the sources of supposedly anonymous communications by monitoring data traffic though a few well-chosen nodes in an anonymity network. To fight this growing concern, a tea... » read more

Can Nano-Patterning Save Moore’s Law?


For years the academic community has explored a novel technology called selective deposition. Then, more than a year ago, Intel spearheaded an effort to bring the technology from the lab to the fab at 7nm or 5nm. Today, selective deposition is still in R&D, but it is gaining momentum in the industry. With R&D funding from Intel and others, selective deposition, sometimes called ALD-e... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 6


Tiny graphene pores for sensors In fundamental work that will likely guide current and future graphene membrane design principles in years to come, MIT researchers have created tiny pores in single sheets of graphene that have an array of preferences and characteristics similar to those of ion channels in living cells, and which could be useful as sensors. The researchers pointed out that e... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 23


Printing 3D circuits from wood Researchers at Chalmers created three-dimensional objects made entirely of cellulose for the first time with the help of a 3D-bioprinter. They also added carbon nanotubes to create electrically conductive material. The difficulty using cellulose derived from wood in additive manufacturing is that cellulose does not melt when heated. Therefore, the 3D printer... » read more

New Patterning Paradigm?


Chip scaling is becoming more difficult at each process node, but the industry continues to find new and innovative ways to solve the problems at every turn. And so chipmakers continue to march down the various process nodes. But the question is for how much longer? In fact, at 16nm/14nm and beyond, chipmakers are finding new and different challenges, which, in turn, could slow IC scaling or br... » read more

Issues And Options At 5nm


While the foundries are ramping up their processes for the 16nm/14nm node, vendors are also busy developing technologies for 10nm and beyond. In fact, chipmakers are finalizing their 10nm process offerings, but they are still weighing the technology options for 7nm. And if that isn’t enough, IC makers are beginning to look at the options at 5nm and beyond. Today, chipmakers can see a p... » read more

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