Electronics & Semiconductors news

Business

UK govt buys semiconductor facility key to defense

The UK government announced on Friday that it had acquired a key semiconductor factory after fears its imminent closure would hamper a crucial supply chain to Britain's armed forces.

Electronics & Semiconductors

Shape-morphing brain sensor adheres to curved surfaces for ultrasound neurostimulation

Transcranial focused ultrasound, a non-invasive technique to stimulate specific areas of the brain using high-frequency sound waves, could be a promising treatment strategy for many neurological disorders. Most notably, it ...

Engineering

Unique straining affects phase transformations in silicon, a material vital for electronics

When Valery Levitas left Europe in 1999, he packed up a rotational diamond anvil cell and brought it to the United States. He and the researchers in his group are still using a much-advanced version of that pressing, twisting ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

There's two sides to this semiconductor, and many simultaneous functions

Gallium nitride-based semiconductors have been a boon for high-frequency and power electronics. They've also revolutionized energy-efficient LED lighting. But no semiconductor wafer has been able to do both at the same time ...

Business

Chipmaker Qualcomm to explore takeover of Intel

Qualcomm Inc. has approached Intel Corp. to discuss a potential acquisition of the struggling chipmaker, people with knowledge of the matter said, raising the prospect of one of the biggest-ever M&A deals.

Engineering

Semi-metals offer new possibilities for electronic devices

Dr. Yuxuan Cosmi Lin, assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, and a team of researchers are studying the potential applications and unique physical properties of ...

Business

ASML earnings up despite pandemic

World leading Dutch microchip machine maker ASML said Wednesday it managed to chalk up strong growth last year despite the coronavirus pandemic as demand for equipment for online services at home kept electronics manufacturers ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Chemists develop polymer cathodes for ultrafast batteries

In the face of the surging demand for lithium-ion batteries and limited lithium reserves, scientists are searching for alternatives to the lithium technology. Russian researchers from Skoltech, D. Mendeleev University, and ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Darkness from light

Microresonators are small glass structures in which light can circulate and build up in intensity. Due to material imperfections, some amount of light is reflected backwards, which is disturbing their function. Researchers ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Thin-film short-wave-infrared image sensor with sub-2µm pixel pitch

Imec researchers have developed a prototype high-resolution short-wave-infrared (SWIR) image sensor with record small pixel pitch of 1.82 µm. It is based on a thin-film photodetector that is monolithically integrated on ...

Engineering

Researchers create a highly sensitive biohybrid olfactory sensor

A keen sense of smell is a powerful ability shared by many organisms. However, it has proven difficult to replicate by artificial means. Researchers combined biological and engineered elements to create what is known as a ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Highly conductive antiperovskites with soft anion lattices

A new structural arrangement of atoms shows promise for developing safer batteries made with solid materials. Scientists at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) designed a new type of ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

A novel approach for improving gate-stack reliability

Bias temperature instability (BTI) is a well-known aging mechanism in metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), which can severely affect the device performance and reliability. It typically manifests ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Imec introduces 2-D materials in the logic device scaling roadmap

The continual scaling of Si-based transistors is challenged by short channel effects that limit further gate length scaling. Field-effect transistors (FETs) with semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (MX2, such ...