Phys.org November 8, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (University of Chicago, Cornell University, Argonne National Laboratory) filled a reactor halfway with liquid A, then add liquid B. At the line where the two meet, they used a tiny tube to inject the rest of the ingredients, which assembled into a film. Then scientists evaporated or drain the liquids, and the film gently glides down to rest intact. The film grows in one continuous motion, so there are no awkward joints between patches. It can be performed at room temperature. The method provides an innovative way to combine […]
Tag Archives: Microelectronics
Valleytronics in a monolayer semiconductor at room temperature
Nanowerk October 24, 2019 Valleytronics is very attractive for future electronic devices and quantum computing technology. However, the phonon-assisted intervalley scattering accelerates dramatically when temperature is increased, resulting in volatile valley states and significantly reduced handedness of far-field photoluminescence at room temperature. A team of researchers in the US (UT Austin, University of Pennsylvania) addressed these issues by manipulating strong light-matter interactions between valley excitons, and a purpose-designed plasmonic chiral metamaterial. In demonstration they were able to actively and reversibly tune and turn ON/OFF the manipulation. These results provide a new way to control quantum information carriers in 2D materials. […]
Creating 2D heterostructures for future electronics
Science Daily October 11, 2019 Integration of dissimilar 2D materials is essential for nanoelectronic applications. Compared to vertical stacking, covalent lateral stitching requires bottom-up synthesis, resulting in rare realizations of 2D lateral heterostructures. Because of its polymorphism and diverse bonding geometries, borophene is a promising candidate for 2D heterostructures, although suitable synthesis conditions have not yet been demonstrated. Researchers at Northwestern University report lateral and vertical integration of borophene with graphene. Topographic and spatially resolved spectroscopic measurements reveal nearly atomically sharp lateral interfaces despite imperfect crystallographic lattice and symmetry matching. Boron intercalation under graphene results in rotationally commensurate vertical heterostructures. […]
Groundbreaking method detects defective computer chips
TechXplore October 7, 2019 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, University of Southern California) has developed a technique called ptychographic X-ray laminography which utilizes x-rays from a synchrotron to illuminate a small region of a rotating chip at an angle of 61 degrees (with respect to the normal of the chip plane). The resulting diffraction patterns are measured with a photon-counting detector array. The data are used to generate high-resolution slice images of the chip, from which 3-D renderings are created. The 3-D image can be compared with the original design as a type of forensics to help companies or […]
Jumping the gap may make electronics faster
Science Daily September 26, 2019 According to an international team of researchers (India, USA – Pennsylvania State University) surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) waves guided by the interface of the two materials can continue propagating even if the metal wire has a break or the metal dielectric interface terminates abruptly. The SPP wave can travel in air for a few 10s of micrometers or the equivalent of 600 transistors laid end to end in a 14 nanometer technology chips. As waves are localized, signal delay and crosstalk may be reduced using optical interconnections based on SPP waves. The problem with using SPP waves […]
Single-electrode material streamlines functions into a tiny chip
Phys.org July 29, 2019 An international team of researchers (Saudi Arabia, USA – Georgia Institute of Technology) has demonstrated transistor‐level integration of electrochemical microsupercapacitors and thin film transistor rectifiers using ruthenium oxide as the common electrode material connecting all devices in the microcircuits. Thin film rectifiers are shown to be capable of rectifying AC signal input from either triboelectric nanogenerators or standard function generators. They exhibit exceptionally slow self‐discharge rate and sufficient power to drive various electronic devices. The study opens a new avenue for developing compact on‐chip electrochemical micropower units integrated with thin film electronics, simplifying device fabrication and […]
Intel’s new AI chips can crunch data 1,000 times faster than normal ones
MIT Technology Review July 16, 2019 Intel has just unveiled Pohoiki Beach, a system that contains 64 of its Loihi AI processors with neuromorphic chips. They can perform certain data-crunching tasks up to 1,000 times faster than more general-purpose processors such as CPUs and GPUs, while using much less power. The company will produce a system capable of simulating 100 million neurons by the end of 2019. Researchers will then be able to apply it to a whole new set of applications…read more.
DARPA Seeks to Make Scalable On-Chip Security Pervasive
DARPA News March 25, 2019 There are no common tools, methods, or solutions for chip-level security currently in wide use. This is largely driven by the economic hurdles and technical trade-offs often associated with secure chip design. To ease the burden of developing secure chips, DARPA developed the Automatic Implementation of Secure Silicon (AISS) program. AISS aims to automate the process of incorporating scalable defense mechanisms into chip designs, while allowing designers to explore economics versus security trade-offs and maximize design productivity. The objective of the program is to develop a design tool and IP ecosystem – which includes tool […]
Environment turns molecule into a switch
Phys.org November 26, 2018 An international team of researchers (Germany, Spain) used a manganese phthalocyanine molecule, which cannot be normally switched, and mounted it on a metallic surface built of silver and bismuth atoms. When a very fine tip emitting an electric field approached the manganese atom at the centre of the molecule, the molecule took on two stable switchable states. They demonstrated that this functionality can also be created in non-switchable molecules by selectively manipulating the molecule’s environment developing a new concept to build molecular switches which may open new design possibilities in molecular electronics in the future…read more. […]
Future information technologies: Nanoscale heat transport under the microscope
Science Daily August 21, 2018 An international team of researchers (Germany, USA – MIT, France) examined heat transport in a metallic-magnetic model system. Their model system consists of a nanometre-thin ferromagnetic nickel layer (12.4 nm) applied to a magnesium oxide substrate, with an even thinner layer of gold (5.6 nm) deposited over the nickel. They introduced heat locally into the model system. They found that the model system does not take the roughly one picosecond to reach thermal equilibrium as expected, but instead a hundred times longer. According to the researchers future data memories based on heat-assisted magnetic recording techniques […]