What Quantum Batteries Have in Store


Quantum battery technology is approaching an inflection point similar to the one quantum computing crossed a decade or so ago, escalating it from a theoretical curiosity to an engineering challenge worth solving. Quantum batteries exploit the strange physical laws of the very small — the quantum world — to gain performance advantages over classical batteries. Recent research on charging ... » read more

Technical Paper Round-Up: March 22


New memories, materials, and transistor types, and processes for making those devices, highlighted the past week's technical papers. That includes everything from vertical MoS2 to programmable black phosphorus image sensors and photonic lift-off processes for flexible thin-film materials. Papers continue to flow from all parts of the supply chain, with some new studies out of Pakistan, Seoul... » read more

An Energy-Efficient DRAM Cache Architecture for Mobile Platforms With PCM-Based Main Memory


Abstract "A long battery life is a first-class design objective for mobile devices, and main memory accounts for a major portion of total energy consumption. Moreover, the energy consumption from memory is expected to increase further with ever-growing demands for bandwidth and capacity. A hybrid memory system with both DRAM and PCM can be an attractive solution to provide additional capacity ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: July 25


Sodium-ion cathode Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas and Seoul National University developed a manganese and sodium-ion-based cathode material they hope could lead to lower-cost rechargeable batteries. In a typical lithium-ion battery, the cathode is made of lithium, cobalt, nickel and oxygen. "Lithium is a more expensive, limited resource that must be mined from just a fe... » read more

Materials For Future Electronics


Examining the research underway in electronics materials provides a keyhole view into what may be possible in future electronics design. Although some of this research will not end up in commercial products, it does provide an indication of the kinds of problems that are being addressed, how they are being approached, and where the research dollars are being spent. Flexible electronics are a... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 16


Lighting up graphene A team of scientists from Columbia University, Seoul National University, and Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science demonstrated an on-chip visible light source using graphene as a filament. They attached small strips of graphene to metal electrodes, suspended the strips above the substrate, and passed a current through the filaments to cause them to heat up.... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: April 14


Elastic energy harvesting Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Seoul National University collaborated to develop a hyper-stretchable elastic-composite energy harvesting device. Their stretchable piezoelectric generator can harvest mechanical energy to produce a ~4V power output with around 250% elasticity and a durability over 104 cycles. The... » read more

System Bits: July 22


All graphene is not the same Widely touted as the most electrically conductive material ever studied, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania now understand that all graphene is not the same. With so few atoms comprising the entirety of the material, the arrangement of each one has an impact on its overall function. The team has used an advanced microscope to study the relationship be... » read more

Amazing New Materials


Materials are fundamental to active photonics devices, and there were plenty of developments discussed at Photonics West 2014. Element Six was happy to talk about progress in making large single-crystal diamond and even larger polycrystalline diamond wafers. Carbon has a number of stable forms; diamond, graphite, nanotubes and amorphous carbon. The Element Six process uses CVD conditions in ... » read more

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