Research

We are asking readers of Electronics Weekly to choose the winner of the University Research Project of the Year in this year’s Elektra Awards. The award is kindly sponsored by Panasonic Industry Europe. You are invited to select the research project from the last year that you feel will make the largest impact on the commercial market in the next five ...

A cubic perovskite α-formamidinium lead iodide known as ‘α-FAPbI3‘ would be a promising solar cell material if it did not gradually turn into useless δ-FAPbI3 at room temperature under the influence of, of all things, light. Water has the same effect. “Solar cells made of α-FAPbI3 exhibit a 25.8% conversion efficiency and an energy gap of 1.48eV, specifications that are ...

Led by the University of Cambridge, an international team of researchers has created materials in which the spin of un-paired electrons can react with photons at room temperature. “These unpaired spins change the rules for what happens when a photon is absorbed and electrons are moved up to a higher energy level. We’ve been working with systems where there is ...

Researchers at Tokyo Tech have made a lateral ferroelectric memory transistor using a 2D material. They picked α-In2Se3, which is “renowned for high carrier mobility, tunable bandgap and strong ferroelectric properties at the atomic level, making it ideal for high-speed memory applications”, according to the university. The bottom-contact transistor has been made by dropping a flake (~29nm thick) of α-In2Se3 ...

An intelligent patch for cardiac monitoring is amongst research projects built on flexible and stretchable PCBs from Würth Elektronik. There are two cardiac monitors, a mini version with three electrodes for short-term monitoring, and one with six electrodes for longer periods. “A completely new approach to integration was developed in this work,” according to Wurth. “It was based on a stretchable ...

Imec has integrated a pinned photodiode structure in thin-film image sensors. With the addition of a pinned-photogate and a transfer gate, the superior absorption qualities of thin-film imagers -beyond one µm wavelength- can finally be exploited, unlocking the potential of sensing light beyond the visible in a cost-efficient way. Detecting wavelengths beyond visible light, for instance infrared light, offers clear ...

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has opened its Extreme Computing centre, as a component of national defence research – with a focus on quantum computing. Described as a state-of-the-art facility, it is located in the organisation’s Information Directorate in Rome, New York – one of the country’s premier military research facilities. The stated aim is to help provide ...

The University of Chicago has built optical waveguides only three atoms thick using molybdenum disulphide, and found them to be an efficient way to transfer light over chip-scale distances. “We were surprised by how powerful this super-thin crystal is,” said University of Chicago professor Jiwoong Park, “not only can it hold energy, but deliver it a thousand times further than ...

IBM has revealed an analogue in-memory IC for implementing neural networks. The device stores weights locally as analogue levels as conductance in phase-change memory, and implements analogue multiply-accumulate calculation. For analogue AI processing “two key challenges need to be overcome: These memory arrays need to compute with precision on par with existing digital systems, and they need to be able ...

Japan’s research institution RIKEN, Mitsui Bussan Aerospace and Vilnius-based NanoAvionics are collaborating on the astronomical NinjaSat X-ray observatory mission. The aim of the two-year mission is to observe X-ray photons from persistently bright X-ray objects in the universe. The organisations have announced that the NinjaSat team aims to observe black holes and neutron stars that suddenly brighten in X-rays. Also, ...