University Electronics

Researchers at the University of Southampton are to cut the need for multi-voltage manufacturing testing at deep sub-micron chip plants. The issue is, Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi told Electronics Weekly, that certain defects only show up at certain voltages.

The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) and the National Science Foundation of China and the National Science Foundation of China have funded a three-year 'spintronics' study to be carried out by the London Centre for Nanotechnology at UCL (University College London), the Institute of Microelectronics at Peking University and the University of Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute.

A magnetic robot 'ferret' is to search cargo containers at UK ports, if a project at the University of Sheffield goes to plan. Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the requirement came out of the UK Boarder Agency (UKBA) which is looking for alternatives to unpacking suspect containers, at least for preliminary searches.

The University of Southampton has been awarded £6m to establish a centre for nanostructured photonic metamaterials by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The University of Southampton is to develop a bio-medical sensor based on silicon nanowires.

A novel architecture that allows a Si/SiGe amplifier to provide 26-30dB of gain at 100GHz - which is claimed to be a record by the University of California, San Diego - was unveiled this week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.

Researchers at the University of Manchester have found a way to predictably switch graphene out of its highly-conductive mode.

The National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, has tested the first of its miniature deep marine chemical sensors - 1600m down off the Canary Islands.

University of Michigan researchers claim to have automated the removal of software bugs that stall multi-threaded embedded software.

University of Oxford spin out Intelligent Sustainable Energy (ISE) is to make electricity meters so smart that they can recognise which domestic appliance is operating at any time.