Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 25


Energy-harvesting floor Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed a flooring material which can be used as a triboelectric nanogenerator to convert footsteps into electricity. The method uses wood pulp, a common waste material already often used in flooring. The pulp is partly make of cellulose nanofibers, which when chemically treated produce an electrical charge when th... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 4


Solar battery Chemists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia integrated solar cells with a large-capacity battery in a single device that eliminates the usual intermediate step of making electricity and, instead, transfers the energy directly to the battery's electrolyte. The team used a redox flow battery, or R... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 6


Carbon nanotube transistors outperform silicon University of Wisconsin-Madison materials engineers created carbon nanotube transistors that outperform silicon transistors, improving the current 1.9 times. The new transistors are particularly promising for wireless communications technologies that require a lot of current flowing across a relatively small area. "This achievement has been a... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Aug. 16


Dissolving batteries Researchers at Iowa State University developed a self-destructing lithium-ion battery capable of delivering 2.5 volts and dissolving or dissipating in 30 minutes when dropped in water. The battery can power a desktop calculator for about 15 minutes. Making such devices possible is the goal of a relatively new field of study called "transient electronics." These transi... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: April 26


An on-chip light source Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) demonstrated that carbon nanotubes are suited for use as an on-chip light source. By integrating tiny carbon nanotubes into a nanostructured waveguide, the team developed a compact miniaturized switching element that converts electric signals into clearly defined optical signals. "The nanostructures act lik... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 16


Energy storage on microchips After more than half a decade of speculation, fabrication, modeling and testing, an international team of researchers from Drexel University in Pennsylvania and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, confirmed that their process for making carbon films and micro-supercapacitors will allow microchips and their power sources to become one and the same. Si... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 3


World’s fastest phototransistor The University of Wisconsin-Madison has developed what the university claims is the world’s fastest and most responsive flexible silicon phototransistor. Phototransistors are semiconductor light sensors. They are based on a transistor with a transparent cover. They provide better sensitivity than a photodiode. The futuristic phototransistor from the Un... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 1


Growing graphene nanoribbons University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers discovered a way to grow graphene nanoribbons with desirable semiconducting properties directly on a conventional germanium semiconductor wafer. This could allow manufacturers to easily use graphene nanoribbons in hybrid integrated circuits, which promise to significantly boost the performance of next-generation electroni... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: July 7


Direct solar energy storage Storing solar energy as hydrogen is a promising way for developing comprehensive renewable energy systems. To accomplish this, traditional solar panels can be used to generate an electrical current that splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter being considered a form of solar fuel. However, the cost of producing efficient solar panels makes wate... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 30


Tiny, solar-powered sensors Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it, even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous ultralow-power converters that used the same approach had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent. ... » read more

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