System Bits: Oct. 9


Bringing plasmonic color to solid materials Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, used silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) to produce plasmonic color-switchable films for solid materials. This effect was previously achieved only in liquids. Rapid and reversible tuning of plasmonic color in solid films, a challenge until now, holds great promise for a number of applications,” sa... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Aug. 13


Smartphone virus scanner Scientists at the University of Tokyo built a new type of virus scanner for smartphones: to detect diseases, not malware. The handheld, portable device uses a smartphone to help scan biological samples for influenza virus. The virus scanner is about the size of a brick, with a slot to position a smartphone such that its camera looks through a lens. Inside the device... » read more

System Bits: July 10


Light waves run on silicon-based chips Researchers at the University of Sydney’s Nano Institute and Singapore University of Technology and Design collaborated on manipulating light waves on silicon-based microchips to keep coherent data as it travels thousands of miles on fiber-optic cables. Such waves—whether a tsunami or a photonic packet of information—are known as solitons. The... » read more

ECTC Packaging Trends


At the recent IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) in Las Vegas, a number of packaging houses, R&D organizations and universities presented a slew of papers on the latest IC packaging technologies. The event provided a glimpse of the future of packaging, which is becoming more important in the industry. At one time, IC packaging took a backseat in the semiconductor... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: May 28


Archival storage Researchers at Harvard University and Northwestern University propose a method of long-lived archival data storage using low-weight molecules. DNA has been explored as a method of archival storage, but the researchers argue that it is inadequate, as the DNA macromolecule is large and requires skilled, repetitive labor to encode and read. Instead, the researchers turned... » read more

System Bits: April 16


Characterizing 2D borophene Researchers at Rice and Northwestern universities collaborated on a method to view the polymorphs of 2D borophene crystals, providing insights into the lattice configurations of the two-dimensional material. Boris Yakobson, a materials physicist at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering, and materials scientist Mark Hersam of Northwestern led a team that not only d... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 14


Integrated photonics platform Researchers at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences came up with an integrated photonics platform capable of storing light and electrically controlling its frequency or color through a microchip. Mian Zhang, first author of the resulting paper, says, “Many quantum photonic and classical optics applications require shifting of op... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 12


AI for solar materials In the search for better organic photovoltaic materials, researchers at Osaka University turned to machine learning to help identify candidates. While organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are promising on a cost basis, they do not yet have the required power conversion efficiency (PCE) necessary for commercialization. A key element in this is the semiconducting polymer layer. ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: April 17


Finding metallic glass Using machine learning techniques, a group of researchers have accelerated the discovery of an alloy called metallic glass. Northwestern University, the Department of Energy’s National Accelerator Laboratory and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have devised a shortcut for discovering and improving metallic glass. In metallic glass, the at... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 30


Wavy display architecture Researchers at KAUST developed a new transistor architecture for flexible ultrahigh resolution devices aimed at boosting the performance of the display circuitry. Flat-panel displays use thin-film transistors, acting as switches, to control the electric current that activates individual pixels consisting of LEDs or liquid crystals. A higher field-effect mobility of... » read more

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