Power/Performance Bits: Aug. 29


Colored solar panels Researchers from AMOLF, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) developed a technology to create efficient bright green solar panels in the hopes that a greater array of colors will prompt greater adoption among architects and builders who might see the traditional blue or black panels as an eyesore. The panels have a gr... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Aug. 15


Solar sunglasses Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) developed sunglasses with colored, semitransparent organic solar cells applied onto the lenses capable of supplying a microprocessor and two displays with electric power. The solar cell lenses, perfectly fitted to a commercial frame, have a thickness of approx. 1.6 millimeters and weigh about six grams, just like th... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 6


Magnetoelectric RAM A team of researchers from the Institute of Electronics, Microelectronics and Nanotechnology in Lille, France and the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow developed a magnetoelectric random access memory (MELRAM) cell that has the potential to increase power efficiency, and thereby decrease heat waste, by orders of magnitude for read operations at room temperature. Th... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: April 4


Self-sustaining microbial fuel cell Researchers at Binghamton University developed the first micro-scale self-sustaining microbial fuel cell, which generates power through the symbiotic interactions of two types of bacteria. A mixed culture of phototrophic and heterotrophic bacteria were placed in a 90-microliter cell chamber, or about one-fifth the size of a teaspoon. Phototrophic bacter... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 28


Power converter for IoT At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, researchers from MIT presented a new power converter that is efficient at a wide range of currents, which could be a boon for IoT sensors that have variable power requirements. The device maintains its efficiency at currents ranging from 500 picoamps to 1 milliamp, a span that encompasses a 200,000-fold increase in... » read more

Wearable AI System Can Detect A Conversation Tone (MIT)


Source: Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Institute of Medical Engineering and Science (IMES); Tuka AlHanai and Mohammad Mahdi Ghassemi "It’s a fact of nature that a single conversation can be interpreted in very different ways. For people with anxiety or conditions such as Asperger’s, this can make social situations extremel... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 20


Stamping with electronic ink Engineers at MIT fabricated a stamp made from carbon nanotubes that is able to print electronic inks onto rigid and flexible surfaces. The team's stamping process should be able to print transistors small enough to control individual pixels in high-resolution displays and touchscreens, said A. John Hart, associate professor of contemporary technology and mecha... » read more

Benefits Of Bluetooth Low Energy IP Integration Into A Single SoC


A recent Synopsys-executed user survey showed significant IoT system-on-chip (SoC) design growth from 2013 to 2015 with contributions from the new wearable IC market. Also, according to Teardown.com, in over 800 teardowns of mobile and wearable products from 2012 to 2015, wireless chips outnumbered the actual number of products, indicating multiple wireless ICs in some designs. Based on these ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 1


New approach to switches According to the National Resource Defense Council, Americans waste up to $19 billion annually in electricity costs due to always-on digital devices in the home that suck power even when they are turned off. With that in mind, a team from University of Utah devised a new kind of switch for electronic circuits that uses solid electrolytes such as copper sulfide to ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 20


Energy-harvesting fabric Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Chongqing University in China developed a fabric that can simultaneously harvest energy from both sunshine and motion. The fabric, just .32mm thick, was constructed using a commercial textile machine to weave together solar cells constructed from lightweight polymer fibers with fiber-based triboelectric nanoge... » read more

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