ENERGY | WIRELESS | NANOTECH | MEMS | OPTICS | QUANTUM | 3D | CHIPS | ALGORITHMS

Monday, June 30, 2003

"OPTICAL: Blueprint brews 3D band-gap crystals"
A cookbook developed by University of Toronto researchers describes how to fabricate efficient, large-scale, three-dimensional photonic band-gap (PBG) crystals. PBG materials enable light from micro-lasers to carry information on-chip the way fiber optics uses light for communication between chips.
Audio Interviews / Interviews on CD
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030630S0052

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

"FRENCH: Les chercheurs mettent en lumi�re une barri�re Schottky r�glable pour transistors ferro�lectriques"
Les transistors ferro�lectriques (jonctions ultra-miniatures sans porte et � deux bornes reliant le semi-conducteur et l'oxyde) se commutent par inversion de la polarit� de leur jonction. C'est la r�gion o� les semi-conducteurs sont r�gl�s sur une longueur d'onde unique de diode laser. Dans la mesure o� le fonctionnement de cette r�gion �chappe encore en partie aux sp�cialistes, personne n'est parvenu � stabiliser avec succ�s le transistor ferro�lectrique. Et les chercheurs de poursuivre leurs travaux.
Audio Interviews / Interviews on CD
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030625S0029
OPTICAL: IBM claims world's first 3D magnetic crystal"
IBM Research has created what it claims is the world's first 3D magneto-optical crystal, complete with embedded quantum dots with optical properties. The work underscores IBM's strategy for nanoscale metamaterials that feature tunable properties not found in nature�such as magnetic crystals. By gradually melding metamaterials with traditional silicon technologies, IBM envisions a mix-and-match cookbook of metamaterials. The first metamaterial exhibits long-sought magneto-optical coupling. This was achieved by carefully packing magnetic- and optical-nanoparticles into a common crystaline superlattice, thereby coupling their properties. It also enabled a magnetic field to modulate an optical transmission.
Audio Interviews / Interviews on CD
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030625S0025

Monday, June 23, 2003

"SCHOTTKY: Researchers demostrate tunable Schottky barrier, aim for ferroelectric"
Ferroelectric transistors�ultra-small gateless two-terminal junctions between semiconductor and oxide�switch by reversing the polarity of their junction. This is the region where semiconductors are tuned for a single wavelength in a laser diode. But because the region's actions are not well understood, no one has successfully stabilized the ferroelectric transistor. There was a tool missing. Now researchers are creating a model of the Schottky barrier in hopes of finding that missing tool. They said the work could lead to smaller, faster computers.
Audio Interviews / Interviews on CD
Text: http://www.eet.com/at
"MEMS: Oak Ridge claims sensitivity record for Si MEMS sensor"
Now that it has proved the concept of a "small, vibrating nose" built as a silicon microelectromechanical system, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has set itself the task of seeing how small an amount of substance the MEMS design can detect. "From our calculations, we believe that we can make it sensitive to the mass change of a single molecule," said researcher Panos Datskos.
Audio Interviews / Interviews on CD
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030623S0061

Thursday, June 19, 2003

"MEMS: UK firm helps bring MEMS to volume production"
Bringing microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) into mainstream manufacturing has been the goal over the last two years for Surfaced Technology Systems, which created a family of plasma etch and deposition tools to speed the process. STS (Newport, England) said its "Pro" tools lower the cost-per-wafer of MEMS designs for volume production, by streamlining the use of anisotropic deep etched structures in silicon.
Audio Interviews / Interviews on CD
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030619S0041

Monday, June 16, 2003

"AI: software gives virtual guitars a lifelike sound"
Sibelius Software Ltd. has successfully applied the principles of artificial intelligence to give the performances of its music software a more humanlike sound. By crafting a rule system that simulates a human virtuoso, Sibelius and its new "guitar-only" version, called G7, perform music convincingly enough to turn heads.
Audio Interview / Interview on CD
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030616S0072
"SARS: Neural-net scanner promises early detection of SARS"
Researcher Harold Szu, working at the Naval Research Laboratory (Arlington, Va.), has turned advanced target recognition technology into what he hopes will be a method for containing the spread of SARS. His 200-channel infrared body scanner, equipped with an unsupervised-learning Lagrange constraint neural network (LCNN) algorithm, can see into the body at any depth and resolve local hotspots-a sign of diseased cells.
Audio Interviews / Interviews on CD
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030616S0069

Thursday, June 12, 2003

"MEMS: Lab claims world's best MEMS sensor"
Panos Datskos at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is claiming a new world's record by detecting just 5.5 femtograms with the Lab's silicon micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) sensor. Measuring just 2 microns long by 50 nanometers thick, the silicon cantilevers�like the teeth of a comb�were vibrated by an inexpensive diode laser. Measurements of the frequency of oscillation confirmed that the sensor had detected just 5.5 femtograms.
Audio Interview / Interview on CD
Text: http://www.eet.com/at/m/news/OEG20030612S0020

Monday, June 09, 2003

"SOLARCELLS: Tetrapod nanocrystals could improve solar cells"
A new shape for semiconductor nanocrystals--tetrapods, rather than simple spheres, rods and disks--could double the efficiency of "plastic" solar cells, according to Paul Alivisatos, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Alivisatos claimed tetrapod-based solar cells promise to convert twice as much incident light into electricity, thus improving chemical sensors, biomedicine and optoelectronic devices, as well as serving as strengthening additives to plastic composites.
Audio Interview / Interview on CD
Text: http://www.eet.com/at/news/OEG20030609S0065
"CLAY: Hybrid films herald organic sensors, 'smart' materials"
Purdue University's Cliff Johnston describes one-nanometer thin films of crystalline clay on germanium substrates that promise to provide the scaffolding for smart materials with embedded organic sensors. Besides enabling faster, more sensitive sensors, marrying organic sensor monolayers with ultra-thin clay films enables "smart" materials that sense their own problems and alert users or even perform "self-healing" in remote applications such as robotic space exploration.
Audio Interview / Interview on CD
Text: EETimes, June. 9, 2003, page 53

Monday, June 02, 2003

"QUANTUM: Single-electron transistors shed heat"
Characterizing the electron flow and the resulting causes of heat dissipation in low-dimensional nanoscale electronics could lead to cool-running single-electron "quantum dot" transistors, according to Robert Blick, electrical and computer engineering associate professor at University of Wisconsin--Madison.
Audio Interviews / Interviews on CD
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030602S0105