Research

Researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have found a novel way to reduce source and drain contact resistance, and increase carrier mobility, in amorphous oxide transistors. In particular, they are amorphous indium gallium oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors that are being proposed for a form of DRAM, where memory density can be increased by stacking the transistors. The problem is ...

Imec has demo-ed a major advancement in silicon-based wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) – a compact 32-channel silicon-based wavelength filter with low loss and high tuning efficiency, enabling a 4x increase in the number of transmitted and received wavelength channels compared to today’s commercial transceivers. The demonstrated capability will enable continued scaling of the bandwidth density and power efficiency of next-generation silicon-photonics-based ...

Researchers at the Tokyo University of Science have designed a scalable, fully-coupled annealing processor with 4096 spins, with parallelized capabilities for accelerated problem-solving Annealing processors are designed specifically for addressing combinatorial optimisation problems, where the task is to find the best solution from a finite set of possibilities. With CMOS  ICs it is necessary for the components of annealing processors ...

A team of engineers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst set themselves the task instrumenting cardiac tissue as it is grown outside the body to study heart disease. Artists impression over photo: “Cardiac tissue is very special,” said Jun Yao of UMass Amherst’s college of engineering. “It has a mechanical activity – contractions and relaxations that pump blood through our ...

Semiconductor devices fabricated in 2021 have a CO2 equivalent footprint of about 175 megatonnes, equivalent to the yearly emissions associated with about 30 million people. Using imec.netzero, a virtual fab model developed in the frame of imec’s Sustainable Semiconductor Technologies and Systems (SSTS) program, imec showed that together, lithography and etch contribute over 40% of advanced logic node Scope 1 ...

Perovskite solar cells can be made in the open air rather than in an inert atmosphere, according to an international research team. Working with p–i–n perovskite solar cells, they added dimethylammonium formate to the perovskite precursors to inhibit the oxidization of iodide ions and deprotonation of organic cations. The cells achieved nearly 25% efficiency (1.53eV cell), and retained 90% of ...

P-channel diamond mosfets have been made many times because the carbon bulk can be doped with boron, or surface hydrogen can pull appropriate carriers into the channel. N-channel diamond mosfets have not proved so easy, blocking the route to diamond CMOS and all the high-voltage (bandgap = 5.5eV), high temperature and high thermal conductivity advantages that it might bring. Now ...

Red phosphorus is a potential anode material for lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries, but like sodium itself, its positive values are counter-balanced by considerable challenges. Academics in China and Poland have done a detailed systematic review of phosphorus anode research, which has been published for anyone to read. “The development of cost-effective and high-performance red phosphorus anode materials for Li-ion and ...

Imec, the Spanish government and the regional government of Andalusia have signed an MoU outlining their intent to establish a specialised 300mm IC pilot line in Malaga, Andalusia. The facility intends to complement Imec’s existing 300mm advanced CMOS process line in Leuven, Belgium, with new 300mm processes developments and the introduction of new materials that are difficult to combine today ...

Key areas where flexible electronics are having a commercial impact are examined by Liam Critchley, who finds smaller companies are carving their own industry niches. The growth of advanced fabrication methods, small-scale nanomaterials and the ability to embed flexible circuitry and components into polymeric hosts have given rise to flexible electronics with advanced functionalities. This has become a popular way ...