"NANOTECH: Nanotubes sorted, aligned to reduce friction"

As much as six percent of the gross national product is expended overcoming the effects of friction, according to the Department of Energy which plans to change all that at the nanoscale where friction is an even more pronounced effect. By assembling an international team to study the effects of friction on tiny carbon nanotubes, DoE funded researchers now claim that half as much friction will be encountered by aligning them properly. Look for carbon nanotube based electronics within five years. R.C.J.


An international team studying the effects of friction on carbon nanotubes claims that it can be cut in half when carbon nanotubes are aligned lengthwise rather than transversely. Carbon nanotubes are as small as a single nanometer in diameter, making it impossible to accurately pick-and-place them with robots. This obstacle prompted scientists and engineers to search for alternative methods for assembling nano devices. The researchers used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to characterize the coefficient of friction for carbon nanotubes with different grain orientations. The researchers concluded that higher friction in the transverse direction was the result of soft lateral distortion in the tubes' shape, which they called "hindered rolling."
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220000617

"NANOTECH: Electronic nose knows, warning with color-changing badge"

Nanoscale sensors not only permit many different tests to be performed simultaneously, but also speeds up recognition tasks by virtue of the smaller chemical reactions necessary to trigger alarms. Look for hazardous materials badges that detect exposure to toxic chemicals within three years. R.C.J.


A sensor akin to an electronic nose could be used to detect toxic industrial chemicals and be as commonplace as radiation badges around nuclear facilities, according to the the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. NIEHS funded research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where investigators created disposable badges using optoelectronics technology to create an artificial nose that detects a range of known toxic industrial chemicals. The sensor works by glowing a different color when detecting specific toxins. The 36-color sensor array also will display a unique pattern of color change for a mix of toxins, permitting a library of color fingerprints to be cataloged. These can be used to identify both common and uncommon exposure. A postage stamp-sized optical sensor array for detecting industrial toxins is said to be able to identify toxins and displaying color changes associated with representative poison gases. The colorimetric sensor array detects a wide range of volatile analytes using a disposable array of cross-responsive nanoporous pigments. Colors change in response to complex sets of chemical reactions, revealing the fingerprint of the toxic substance detected.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220000274

"ENERGY: 'Tree power' harvests bio-energy"

Harvesting energy from the environment to monitor remote sensors enables more ambitious applications, such as monitoring the weather under the canope of trees in the forest, rather than just in clearings where weather stations can communicate with satellites. University of Washington, MIT and Voltree are advancing the state of the art. Look for tree-powered remote sensors to be deployed by the U.S. Forest Service as early as 2010. R.C.J.


Trees can be used to power circuits, but their voltage is too small to charge conventional batteries. University of Washington (Seattle) researchers recently demonstrated a nanoscale "boost converter" that integrates the ultra-low-voltage potentials generated by trees. A tree's output voltage can be as low as 20 millivolts, according to the researchers. They designed a circuit to nevertheless accumulate enough power over time to produce a 1.1-volt output--enough to power wireless sensors. Last year, the theory behind "tree power" was demonstrated by MIT which spun-off the company Voltree Power (Canton, Mass.) which recently won a contract from the U.S. Forest Service to supply a wireless mesh sensor network powered by trees. The Forest Service operates 28,000 U.S. weather stations, each transmiting conditions on the ground to a satellite. Voltree's energy harvester gathers information from the surrounding forest and transmits it wirelessly to existing weather stations. The architecture extends the stations' reach under the forest canopy for the first time. Pilot sites will be tested this fall, with the first weather station upgrades scheduled for the first quarter of 2010.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219700690

"MATERIALS: Startup pioneers carbon-based FPGAs"

By 2015, carbon films will be ready to take over from copper the interconnection task, as well as the from silicon the semiconductor task and with proper coatings even the role of insulator. But today carbon films--called graphene--cannot be fabricated in sizes larger than one-inch without it deteriorating into its amorphous form, called graphite. Not willing to wait until 2015, a startup and Rice Univeristy are harnessing the easy-to-fab amorphous graphite to create configurable carbon memory elements today. Look for carbon-based field programmable gate arrays in two years. R.C.J.


Carbon-based memory architectures promise to revolutionize FPGA design, according to the founder of a chip startup. Startup NuPGA was founded by Zvi Or-Bach, a winner of the EE Times Innovator of the Year Award. He previously founded eASIC and Chip Express. Or-Bach has applied for a patent, along with Rice University, for its carbon-based memory process developed by professor James Tour. The approach uses graphite as the reprogrammable memory element inside vias on otherwise conventional FPGAs. Rice University researchers developed a bulk chemical process that converted nanotubes into nanoribbons, providing the raw material needed to perfect a technique based on using voltage pulses to make or break connections--essentially turning the carbon ribbons into reprogrammable switches. NuPGA plans to harness these reprogrammable switches in FPGAs by inserting graphite into vias between chip layers, allowing them to be reconfigured on-the-fly.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219700381

"WIRELESS: Black Sand debuts first 3G power amp in CMOS"

The world's first CMOS power amplifier (PA) for 3G wireless mobile devices was demonstrated today at startup Black Sand Technologies, Inc. (Austin, Texas). A clever architecture allowed the company to recast the role of CMOS transistors into a cascaded structure with adaptive algorithms that rivals the performance of a gallium arsenide 3G PA, but on a less expensive CMOS chip.

"The breakthrough innovation that this team has developed is a power amplifier architecture that uses the smart capabilities of CMOS to solve the voltage breakthrough problem that here-to-fore has been a barrier to CMOS playing competitively in the 3G PA arena," said John Diehl, Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

The company estimates that its CMOS 3G PA will be in mass production by 2010, the first year that 3G mobile phone sales will be larger than 2G sales (see figure).


The problem with casting 3G PA's in silicon, which the experts at Black Sand claim to have overcome, was the size of the voltage swings necessary to ramp the power amplifier up and down as required of 3G, compared to always-on 2G PAs. By cascading CMOS transistors atop each other in a voltage-ladder like structure, Black Sand was able to tolerate the smaller voltage swings available in silicon, compared to gallium arsenide.

"A gallium arsenide device can handle a larger voltage swing before it fails--a CMOS transistor is lower, so it comes into the game handicapped from the prespective of power and efficiency," said Diehl. "But our device uses a differential architecture that stacks transistors in such a way that allows the voltage required to swing over multiple transistors," said Diehl.

The company also claims to have built-in the smarts to protects the CMOS circuits from thermal runaway problems as well as from impedance mismatches, such as touching the antenna with your hand. The chip also integrated onto their CMOS die the six discrete components that are required in addition to a gallium arsenide 3G PA chip, making the CMOS solution both smaller and cheaper, according to Black Sand.

CMOS PAs for 2G phones have already appeared, although the lion's share of the market still goes to gallium arsenide devices. The first 2G CMOS PA was demonstrated by Silicon Laboratories back in 2004. Black Sand was founded in 2005 by three former Silicon Labs' employees: Susanne Paul, chief technologist and architect of Black Sand's chips, Dave Pietruszynski, vice president of engineering and Jim Nohrden vice president of marketing.

The world's first 3G CMOS PA has been in development at Black Sand's since June 2007, when the company got its first round of funding. Black Sand also announced today that it had secured $10 million in second round funding from Northbridge Venture Partners and Austin Ventures, bringing the total investment to $18.2 million. Black Sand will use the second round funding to ramp up mass production of its CMOS power amplifiers and to accelerate the development of additional chips.

Black Sand has yet to announce any customers, but claims it has samples out to mobile phone makers, netbook makers, datacard makers and to other application develpers that use gallium arsenide PAs today.

Text: http://nextgenlog.blogspot.com/2009/09/wireless-black-sand-debuts-first-3g.html

"MEMS: Digital dual-axis MEMS gyro debuts"

Digital cameras when handheld can take much better pictues if their images are stabilized by micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) gyroscope chips, which have just dropped below $2 at Invensense. Look for every digital camera--even those in the billions of cell phone cameras being used today--to use a MEMS gyro in five years. R.C.J.


Image stabilization algorithms sense the movement of a digital camera, then nudge the camera lens (or sometimes the sensor) to compensate for the movement. As mobile devices integrate higher-resolution cameras, adding relatively inexpensive MEMS gyroscopes is now an option, according to one manufacturer. Invensense Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) claims to be the first MEMS vendor to offer a digital, two-axis gyroscope chip for camera stabilization. Invensense previously claimed to also have developed the world's smallest analog dual-axis gyro. Since then, other vendors have followed suit. Invensense's digital gyro is a redesigned MEMS chip that consumes 50 percent less power than analog gyros.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219700113

"MATERIALS: Graphene made magnetic with hydrogen coating"

Carbon sheets--graphene--can be made ferromagnetic, called graphone, by adjusting the amount of hydrogenation on their surface, according to these researchers. With an adjustable magnetic moment that can couple ferromagnetically, graphone allows the magnetism to be harnessed in semiconducting devices. Look for spintronic devices using graphone within 10 years. R.C.J.


Graphone, a new magnetic version of carbon monolayers called graphene, could enable a new breed of carbon spintronic devices, researchers claim. Graphene, consisting of pure crystalline carbon sheets, cannot be doped with impurities to adjust its semiconducting and magnetic properties as easily as silicon since carbon does not readily "heal" implantations with annealing. Rather than implanting dopants, researchers say, a surface treatment can be used to adjust a carbon sheet's properties. Researchers say hydrogen can be used to fine-tune graphene's metallic, semiconductor and magnetic properties, resulting in either graphene (metallic), graphane (semiconducting) or graphone (ferromagnetic).
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219501252

"WIRELESS: Nanoscale laser harnesses plasmons"

Semiconductor lasers could someday be used to shuttle light around chips instead of electrons, but not until they are shrunk to the nanoscale. Now researchers think they may have found the key--confining light in waveguides smaller than their own wavelength then linking them to electron waves called plasmons. Look for electronic chips with integrated optics within five years. R.C.J.


What is being billed as the world's smallest semiconductor laser boasts a 5-nm active region that is 20 times smaller than the wavelength of the light it emits. The key to scaling down the laser to the nanometer level was harnessing the interaction between light and surface plasmon waves. Last month, experimental laser collaborators at Cornell University, Norfolk State University and Purdue University performed an alternative nanoscale laser demonstration, but their device was not integrated onto a chip like the current device being demonstrated by the University of California at Berkeley. Discrete semiconductor lasers used in telecommunications equipment are measured in millimeters, but micron-sized semiconductor lasers are currently under development in many labs. The two lasers recently demonstrated are the first to reach the nanometer realm.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219500861