Save. Share. Connect.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

VOLUME - NUMBER

Hanwha Techwin Establishes SMT "Basecamp" in California

By Michael Skinner, Associate Editor
Cypress, CA — One of the largest conglomerates in South Korea, Hanwha Group has a long history of building everything from security cameras to jet engines and self-propelled howitzers. The company now plans to channel this expertise into the North American SMT market.

World's First Biocompatible Ion Current Battery

College Park, MD — Engineers at the University of Maryland have invented an entirely new kind of battery. It is biocompatible, because it produces the same kind of electrical energy that the body uses.

	Nanowire Resonators Miniaturize Electronics


	Osaka, Japan — Researchers from Osaka University, Italy and the Netherlands have shown that nanowire resonators can be used to further miniaturize energy-efficient electronics. A major path to this miniaturization has been the development of nano-size resonators, which convert small levels of electrical power ...

Newest Class of Supercarrier Is All-Electric

By Walter Salm, Editor Emeritus
Newport News, VA — The U.S. Navy's supercarriers are getting even more super. Having just completed sea trials, the first member of a totally new class of carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) has been designed to operate more efficiently and with a smaller crew than the 10 Nimitz ...

"Spintronics" May Enable Future Hybrid Electronics

Linköping, Sweden — A discovery of how to control and transfer spinning electrons paves the way for novel hybrid devices that could outperform existing semiconductor electronics. In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers at Linköping University in Sweden demonstrate how ...

	Stretchable, Compressible Supercapacitors


	Hong Kong — Flexible, wearable electronics require equally flexible, wearable power sources. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, Chinese scientists have introduced an extraordinarily stretchable and compressible polyelectrolyte which, in combination with carbon nanotube composite paper electrodes, forms ...

ASM and RIT Strengthen R&D Partnership

By Michael Skinner, Associate Editor
Rochester, NY — Pushing the conventional boundaries of academia, while building on an almost two-decade-long relationship, ASM Assembly Systems has expanded its partnership with Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The company is supplying equipment and a dedicated engineer to ...

	SEMI: Record Fab Spending for 2017 and 2018


	Milpitas, CA — The latest update to the World Fab Forecast report, published on May 31, 2017 by SEMI, reveals record spending for fab construction and fab equipment. Korea, Taiwan, and China all see large investments, and spending in Europe will also increase significantly. In 2017, over $49 billion will be ...

Quasiparticles Could Lead to Faster Circuits

Ames, IA — Zhe Fei points to the bright and dark vertical lines running across his computer screen. This nano-image, he explains, shows the waves associated with a half-light, half-matter quasiparticle moving inside a semiconductor.

	New Prospects for Universal Memory


	Moscow, Russia — Researchers from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology's (MIPT) Center of Shared Research Facilities have found a way to control oxygen concentration in tantalum oxide films produced by atomic layer deposition. These thin films could be the basis for creating new forms of nonvolatile memory ...

Food Color Material Repurposed as Sensors

By John Toon, Georgia Tech
Atlanta, GA — Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have found a material that has been used for decades to color food items ranging from corn chips to ice cream could potentially have uses far beyond food dyes. In a study published in March, the researchers described how ...

	Making Batteries from Waste Glass Bottles


	Riverside, CA — Researchers at the University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering have used waste glass bottles and a low-cost chemical process to create nanosilicon anodes for high-performance lithium ion batteries. The batteries will extend the range of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid ...

	Graphene Used as "Copy Machine" for Semiconductor Wafers


	By Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office Cambridge, MA — In 2016, annual global semiconductor sales reached their highest-ever point, at $339 billion worldwide. That same year, the semiconductor industry spent about $7.2 billion worldwide on wafers that serve as the substrates for microelectronics components, which can be turned into ...

Wacker's Global Growth Prompts Investment in R&D

By Steve Leberstien
Munich, Germany — Wacker Chemical grew its worldwide sales by two percent in 2016, in spite of modest growth in GDP around the world, achieving a record 5.4 billion euro (USD $5.8 billion) in sales, representing a worldwide growth of 2 percent. The company's polysilicon group benefitted ...

	Hearing Voices: Low-Power Speech Recognition


	Cambridge, MA — The butt of jokes as recently as 10 years ago, automatic speech recognition is now on the verge of becoming a chief means of interacting with computing devices.

Silk Sensor Could Speed Development of New Materials

Gaithersburg, MD — Consumers want fuel-efficient vehicles and high-performance sporting goods, municipalities want weather-resistant bridges and manufacturers want more efficient ways to make reliable vehicles and aircraft. What is needed are new lightweight, energy-saving composites that will not ...

	2016 Semiconductor Equipment Sales Over $41 Billion


	Milpitas, CA — SEMI has reported that worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment totaled $41.24 billion in 2016, representing a year-over-year increase of 13 percent. Total equipment bookings for 2016 were 24 percent higher than 2015.

Energy Storage at the Nanoparticle Scale

Palo Alto, CA — In a lab below the engineering quad of Stanford University, researchers in the Dionne lab camped out with one of the most advanced microscopes in the world to capture an unimaginably small reaction.

Self-Assembling Particles Brighten the Future of LEDs

Princeton, NJ — Just when lighting aficionados were in a dark place, LEDs came to the rescue. Over the past decade, LED technologies have swept the lighting industry by offering features such as durability, efficiency and long life.

	North American PCB Sales Enjoy Solid Growth


	Bannockburn, IL — IPC has released its December 2016 findings from its monthly North American Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Statistical Program. Sales growth in December was solid, while the PCB book-to-bill ratio slipped to 0.98.