Research

Apple has joined Imec’s new Sustainable Semiconductor Technologies and Systems (SSTS) research program. The SSTS program is the first initiative rallying stakeholders from across the IC value chain to anticipate the environmental impact of choices made at chip technology’s definition phase. Using concrete and reliable models, and detailed (carbon) footprint analyses, the program will help the IC-making industry cut back ...

Lead (Pb) halide perovskites, known for fledgling solar cell technology, can also emit light. The materials are generally unstable in the moisture of the atmosphere, deteriorating over hours or days. But researchers in Australia have maintained ~80% of emission despite 10,000 hours of water immersion. Although this was a photo-luminescence proof-of-concept – emitting light when illuminated by a laser in ...

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) could extract energy from waves large and small, even well under water, according to Chinese scientist. The seaweed-like proof-of-concept generators were ~40 x 80mm, and attached at one end to somethign solid while currents in the water wafted the free end. They were made by coated two strips of different polymers with conductive ink and sealing them back ...

Imec and Imec spin-off miDiagnostics have signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement for Imec’s patented technology whereby aerosols and droplets from exhaled breath are captured for screening for viral RNA through miDiagnostics ultrafast PCR technology. The agreement enables miDiagnostics to kickstart the commercialization of a COVID-19 breathalyzer (as opposed to classical COVID-19 testing methods based on blood, saliva or a sample ...

Imperial College London (ICL) is to design and build an instrument for NASA – a magnetometer – for its heliophysics mission, the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP). The university will also provide ground support and personnel to support the instrument and the IMAP science team. The boost for ICL follows an agreement between NASA and the UK Space Agency ...

Researchers at Fraunhofer IZM have joined forces with TecVenture, Optrontec and KAIST to create a high-speed camera fitted with a unique multi-lens array that can capture images with a far greater depth of field than its conventional counterparts. The system is suitable for efficient damage analytics in industrial use or for many research activities. As production processes are accelerating everywhere ...

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft are funding five trilateral projects for the transfer of knowledge from DFG-funded basic research to industry. The collaboration between universities, Fraunhofer institutes and companies is being supported with a total of around €4.5 million over three years. One of the projects is the “MEMS-based parametric amplifier for range optimization of ...

University of Surrey researchers have been inventing ways to get electronic activity into every page of plain paper books, and have come up with two forms of ‘magic bookmark’ as they have dubbed them. Developed at Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute and its Digital World Research Centre, the idea is that the bookmark communiates with a phone app via a bluetooth link. One of the ...

Metallic inks for printing flexible conductors are well know, but how about inks for printing flexible microwave dielectics? Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have developed a dielectric ink from the polymer ABS and ceramic particles. By screen-printing it onto glass, and then peeling off the dried result, flexible large-area dielectics of tunable thickness and permittivity can ...

Researchers at Harvard University are looking for a simple way to store data for a long time – longer than the decades of life preducted for DVDs and flash memory. Encoding data on DNA has been done, as it has on other long-chain polymers with long life, and the data desnity is emormous: ~1018 bytes/mm3, according to the university. But making ...