Synopsis: Electronics:

The achievement is reported in an article on the cover of the journal Nature. eople have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics moving beyond siliconsays Subhasish Mitra an electrical engineer

Here is the proof. xperts say the achievement will galvanize efforts to find successors to silicon chips which could soon encounter physical limits that might prevent them from delivering smaller faster cheaper electronic devices. arbon nanotubes CNTS have long been considered as a potential successor to the silicon transistorsays Professor

Jan Rabaey a world expert on electronic circuits and systems at the University of California Berkeley.

But until now it hasn t been clear that CNTS a semiconductor material could fulfill those expectations. here is no question that this will get the attention of researchers in the semiconductor community

Mihail Roco a senior advisor for nanotechnology at the National Science Foundation called the work n important scientific breakthrough. t was roughly 15 years ago that carbon nanotubes were fashioned first into transistors the on-off switches

at the heart of digital electronic systems. But a bedeviling array of imperfections in these carbon nanotubes has frustrated long efforts to build complex circuits using CNTS.

and its cousins. uch concerns arise from the demands that designers place upon semiconductors and their fundamental workhorse unit those on-off switches known as transistors.

For decades progress in electronics has meant shrinking the size of each transistor to pack more transistors on a chip.

But as transistors become tinier they waste more power and generate more heatâ##all in a smaller and smaller space as evidenced by the warmth emanating from the bottom of a laptop.

Many researchers believe that this power-wasting phenomenon could spell the end of Moore s Law named for Intel Corp. cofounder Gordon Moore who predicted in 1965 that the density of transistors would double roughly every two years

leading to smaller faster and as it turned out cheaper electronics. But smaller faster and cheaper has meant also smaller faster and hotter. nergy dissipation of silicon-based systems has been a major concernsays Anantha Chandrakasan head of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and a world

leader in chip research. He called the Stanford work major benchmarkin moving CNTS toward practical use.

and low-power switching make carbon nanotubes excellent candidates to serve as electronic transistors. NTS could take us at least an order of magnitude in performance beyond where you can project silicon could take uswong said.

But with billions of nanotubes on a chip even a tiny degree of misaligned tubes could cause errors

Depending on how the CNTS grow a fraction of these carbon nanotubes can end up behaving like metallic wires that always conduct electricity instead of acting like semiconductors that can be switched off.

Then they pumped the semiconductor circuit full of electricity. All of that electricity concentrated in the metallic nanotubes

The Stanford team used this imperfection-immune design to assemble a basic computer with 178 transistors a limit imposed by the fact that they used the university s chip-making facilities rather than an industrial fabrication process.

Though it could take years to mature the Stanford approach points toward the possibility of industrial-scale production of carbon nanotube semiconductors according to Naresh Shanbhag a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

and director of SONIC a consortium of next-generation chip design research. he Wong/Mitra paper demonstrates the promise of CNTS in designing complex computing systemsshanbhag says adding that this will motivate researchers elsewhere toward greater efforts in chip design

and looks like a chemistry experiment with two electrodes one positive the other negative plunged into a bottle of wastewater.

Inside that murky vial attached to the negative electrode bacteria feast on particles of organic waste

and produce electricity that is captured by the battery s positive electrode. e call it fishing for electronssays Craig Criddle a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford university.

As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences at the battery s negative electrode colonies of wired microbes cling to carbon filaments that serve as efficient electrical conductors.

and convert it into biological fuel their excess electrons flow into the carbon filaments and across to the positive electrode

After a day or so the positive electrode has absorbed a full load of electrons and has largely been converted into silver says Xing Xie an interdisciplinary researcher.

The new approach could have applications for the semiconductor and magnetic storage industries. Researchers were able to increase the resolution of their intricate structure fabrication from approximately 200 nanometers to approximately 15 nanometers.

and other oftmaterials has the potential to enable new classes of electronics diagnostic devices and chemical sensors.

The challenge is that many of these materials are fundamentally incompatible with the sorts of lithographic techniques that are used traditionally in the integrated circuit industry.

I look back at my career I will be most proud ofmuller says. t s the first time that anyone has been able to see the arrangement of atoms in a glass. hat s more two-dimensional glass could someday find a use in transistors by providing a defect-free ultra-thin material that could improve the performance of processors

#Quantum system teleports an atom For the first time physicists have transmitted an atom from one location to another inside an electronic chip.

and more functional electronic chips says Arkady Fedorov of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems

and a receiver. nce entanglement is created this â##impossible information transfer becomes in fact possible thanks to laws of quantum mechanicsfedorov says.

or the first time the stunning process of quantum teleportation has now been used in a circuit to relay information from one corner of the sample to the other. hat makes our work interesting is the system uses a circuit much like modern computer chips. n our system the quantum

 ventually this technology will be used to create more powerful devices. his research indicates that questions relating to the physics of quantum communication can be addressed using electronic circuits at microwave frequencies. ne may even foresee future experiments in which quantum information will be distributed over larger distances

#Clay supercapacitors built to handle extreme heat Researchers have used cheap and abundant clay as a key ingredient in a supercapacitor that can operate at very high temperatures.

The supercapacitor could be useful for powering devices in extreme environments On earth and in space. ur intention is to completely move away from conventional liquid

A supercapacitor combines the best qualities of capacitors that charge in seconds and discharge energy in a burst and rechargeable batteries that charge slowly but release energy on demand over time.

The ideal supercapacitor would charge quickly, store energy, and release it as needed. esearchers have been trying for years to make energy storage devices like batteries and supercapacitors that work reliably in high-temperature environments,

but this has been given challenging the traditional materials used to build these devices, explains Pulickel Ajayan,

and two current collectors to form a supercapacitor. Tests and subsequent electron microscope images of the device showed no change in the materials after heating it to 200 degrees Celsius.

the supercapacitors were stable through 10,000 test cycles. Both energy and power density improved by two orders of magnitude as the operating temperature increased from room temperature to 200 degrees Celsius, the researchers found.

rate paving the way for a more lightweight material for cars and electronics. Weighing in at two thirds less than aluminum magnesium is the lightest structural metal.

#In an era of light-weighting for energy and emissions reductions there is a great demand for magnesium alloys in everything from portable electronics to air

Fine control over these light beams will enable improvements for on-chip biomedical devices and super resolution imaging. or all these applications,

#Silicon system produces squeezed light California Institute of technology rightoriginal Studyposted by Kimm Fesenmaier-Caltech on August 9 2013caltech (US)# A new system constructed on a silicon microchip offers a more useful way to produce the ultraquiet

Although other research groups previously have produced squeezed light the new system generates the ultraquiet light in a way that can be adapted more easily to a variety of sensor applications.#

#Our experiment brings together in a tiny microchip package many aspects of work that has been done in quantum optics and precision measurement over the last 40 years.#

and integration enabling a great many applications in electronics.##Cancel each other outin this new system a waveguide feeds laser light into a cavity created by two tiny silicon beams.

And as is the case with the noise-canceling technology used for example in some headphones the fluctuations that shake the beams interfere with the fluctuations of the light.

#Compact graphene device could shrink supercapacitors Monash University rightoriginal Studyposted by Emily Walker-Monash on August 5 2013monash U. AUS)# A new strategy to engineer graphene-based supercapacitors could make them viable

for widespread use in renewable energy storage portable electronics and electric vehicles. Supercapacitors are made generally of highly porous carbon impregnated with a liquid electrolyte to transport the electrical charge.

Known for their almost indefinite lifespan and the ability to recharge in seconds the drawback of existing supercapacitors is their low energy-storage-to-volume ratio#known as energy density.

Low energy density of five to eight watt-hours per liter means supercapacitors are unfeasibly large or must be recharged frequently.

Dan Li a materials engineering professor at Monash University and his team created a supercapacitor with energy density of 60 watt-hours per liter#comparable to lead-acid batteries and around 12 times higher than commercially available supercapacitors.#

#It has long been a challenge to make supercapacitors smaller lighter and compact to meet the increasingly demanding needs of many commercial uses#says Li.

Graphene which is formed when graphite is broken down into layers one atom thick is very strong chemically stable and an excellent conductor of electricity.

To make their uniquely compact electrode Li s team exploited an adaptive graphene gel film they had developed previously.

They used liquid electrolytes#generally the conductor in traditional supercapacitors#to control the spacing between graphene sheets on the subnanometer scale.

Unlike in traditional#hard#porous carbon where space is wasted with unnecessarily large pores density is maximized without compromising porosity in Li s electrode.

Each image corresponds to one LED element in the LED array. Therefore in the various images, light coming from known different directions illuminates the sample.

The neutrino beam is monitored by a detector complex in Tokai and aimed at the gigantic Super-Kamiokande underground detector in Kamioka near the west coast of Japan 295 kilometers (185 miles) away from Tokai.

An analysis of the data from the Super-Kamiokande detector associated with the neutrino beam time from J-PARC reveals that there are more electron neutrinos (a total of 28 events) than would be expected (4. 6 events) without this new process.

The current T2k collaboration consists of over 400 physicists from 59 institutions in 11 countries.

The National Science Foundation, Google, Qualcomm, Adobe, Intel, and the Okawa Foundation supported the research a

Commercial applications in small electronic devices solar cells batteries and even medical devices are just around the corner.

or more in size, says Hone. his strength will be invaluable as scientists continue to develop new flexible electronics and ultrastrong composite materials.

Strong, large-area graphene can be used for a wide variety of applications such as flexible electronics and strengthening componentsotentially,

while sensors onboard collect and send in real time the data scientists need to predict the intensity and trajectory of storms:

and release dropsondes sensors that free-fall and might or might not collect helpful data.

We have cheap sensors but with a lot of them you can significantly increase the accuracy of your measurements.

Some of the photons are allowed to escape from the device to serve a purpose such as reading data off a CD or etching a circuit board.

#One benefit of the electrically driven polariton laser is it only needs to be attached to a power supply to emit photons allowing it to be integrated easily with existing semiconductor chips in the future.

and requires constant cooling by liquid helium to prevent the excitons inside the gallium arsenide semiconductors from being pulled apart by thermal energy.

#We re hoping we can replace conventional semiconductor lasers with these polariton lasers in the future#Kim says.#

Existing infrared detectors use cryogenically cooled semiconductors or thermal detectors known as microbolometers in which changes in electrical resistance can be correlated to temperatures.

#We set out to make an optomechanical thermal infrared detector#says Ertugrul Cubukcu assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania.#

#Rather than changes in resistance our detector works by connecting mechanical motion to changes in temperature.#

#Other researchers have developed optomechanical infrared sensors based on this principle but their sensitivities have been comparatively low.

so you don t need any additional material to make these antennas#Cubukcu says.##We take the same exact platform

and by patterning it with these nanoscale antennas the conversion efficiency of the detector improves 10 times.#

#Our antennas can be engineered to absorb at any wavelength.##While only a proof-of-concept at this stage future research will demonstrate the device s capabilities as a low-cost way of analyzing individual proteins and gas molecules.

#Ambiq Micro has made a chip that consumes 10 times less energy Ambiq Micro, a semiconductor company in Austin,

so in high-enough densities and manufacturing volume to make it worth the consumer electronic industry time.

On Monday, it launched its Apollo microcontroller, which can lower the power consumption of the tiny chips used inside wearable devices by as much as 10 times in wake mode

and 38 times in sleep mode depending on the type of ARM core used inside the chip.

For the consumer this means a battery life for a smart watch or activity tracker that could last for weeks or months longer than the current standard.

when sending power through the chip. Most chips send their signaling information, which determines if it is sending zeros or ones, at between 1 and 1. 8 volts,

but the Ambiq chip sends its information. 5 volts. That means it uses much less energy overall.

Ambiq VP of Marketing Mike Salas says he expects to see Ambiq microcontrollers in shipping products by the middle of the year.

Its microcontrollers will compete with those already on the market from Atmel, ST MICROELECTRONICS and other large chipmakers.

or they could use smaller batteries and then design smaller enclosures for their electronics. As a woman who finds almost all of the smart watches on the market today to be too large

I love to see a slightly more delicate form factor using a smaller battery and more power-efficient chip h

#Coupling microfluidics with recent advances in consumer electronics can make certain lab-based diagnostics accessible to almost any population with access to smartphones.

The sensors are attached to satellites designed to only last a few years. There are so many that if one fails it doesn take down the entire system,

and no moving parts to break and since the TEG is made from solid state semiconductor elements,

#Tiny new sensor could simplify brain wave research Two years ago, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the U s. developed a tiny magnetic sensor that could detect the human heartbeat without touching the subject's skin.

Now, the same team has improved the sensitivity of the device tenfold, making it capable of measuring human brain activity

the researchers came up with a magnetic sensor the size of a sugar cube that is also cheaper to manufacture

"Our sensors can be fabricated in parallel with techniques usually adopted for microelectronics, "says Kitching.""Moreover, while SQUID-based imaging systems require a large magnetically-shielded room to operate,

an imaging system based on our sensors could probably be operating in a much smaller (person-sized) shielded enclosure.

an array of over 306 SQUID sensors is mounted in heavy helmet-shaped flasks containing cryogenic coolants.

But the peculiar characteristics of the newly developed sensor might enable lightweight and flexible MEG helmets that contain much fewer sensors."

"We are targeting 32 sensors for our system right now, "says Kitching. The NIST sensor was used to measure alpha waves in the brain associated with a person opening

and closing their eyes as well as signals resulting from stimulation of the hand; the measurements were verified then by comparing them with signals recorded by a SQUID.

The sensor measured magnetic signals of about 1 picotesla (trillionth of a tesla), which is 50 million times weaker than the Earth's magnetic field."

#Inexpensive sensor measures ripeness of fruit As fruit matures, it releases a gas known as ethylene,

inexpensive ethylene sensors that could be used in places such as supermarkets. There, they could let shopkeepers know which batches of fruit need to sold the soonest

each sensor utilizes an array of tens of thousands of carbon nanotubes, which have had copper atoms attached to them.

the sensors are able to determine ethylene levels. As a result, the sensors can reportedly measure concentrations as low as 0. 5 parts per million for context

a concentration of between 0. 1 and one part per million is what is required generally for most types of fruit to ripen.

The sensors were tested on bananas, avocados, apples, pears and oranges, and were able to accurately gauge the ripeness of all of them.

Swager now envisions the sensors being built into the cardboard boxes used to store fruit, and equipped with radio-frequency identification chips that would allow them to transmit ripeness data to handheld reading devices used by shopkeepers.

Each sensor and chip combined should cost about US$1, as opposed to the $1, 200 or so that gas chromatography

or mass spectroscopy systems currently run at. Another system, developed at the UK's National Physical Laboratory, uses radio frequencies, microwaves, terahertz radiation and far-infrared light to determine the ripeness of strawberries

such as the gut-on-a-chip, can therefore significantly accelerate our ability to develop effective new drugs that will help people who suffer from these disorders."

"The gut-on-a-chip is the latest in a series of engineered organ models developed at the Wyss Institute,

which began with the lung-on-a-chip. The institute has received also funding to develop a heart-lung micromachine to test the safety and efficacy of inhaled drugs on the integrated heart and lung function,

and a spleen-on-a-chip to treat sepsis. The team gut-on-a-chip is detailed in the journal Lab on a Chip.

Source: Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineerin e

#Crab shells used to produce cheaper pharmaceuticals Crabs and lobsters...they're not just for eating, anymore.

Chitin, one of the main components of their exoskeletons, has recently found use in things such as self-healing car paint, biologically-compatible transistors, flu virus filters,

and pen of the Astronaut 4 are equipped also with sensors to detects signs of mastitis.

#Nature inspires color-sensitive CMOS-compatible photodetector Researchers at Rice university's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) have developed a new image sensor that mimics the way we see color by integrating light amplifiers and color

and more organic designs for CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) sensors and other photodetectors used in cameras.

Conventional image sensors work by first converting light into electrical signals then combining that information with the red green

But this approach adds bulk to the sensor and the filters gradually degrade under exposure to sunlight.

but this new approach has advantages beyond on-chip integration adds LANP Director Naomi Halas.

Samsung is already moving in this direction partnering up with the NBA for 360-degree in-game action for the Gear VR in 2015.

while a built-in, battery-powered digital display shows the calories burned during your current workout and the total calories you've burned since setting the chair up.

an array of Philips LEDS that put out either 3, 500 or 4, 000 lumens (depending on the streetlight model),

Products that use silica-based nanoparticles for biomedical uses such as various chips drug or gene delivery and tracking imaging ultrasound therapy and diagnostics may also pose an increased cardiovascular

Previous research has turned up some unsettling results including that silver nanoparticles can materially alter a person's immunity and that titanium dioxide nanoparticles cause systemic genetic damage in mice.

which the spinal cord had been cut using electrodes that had been implanted onto the outermost layer of the spinal canal in that region.

The implant consists of a stretchy silicone substrate covered in cracked-gold conducting tracks leading to electrodes made from a silicon/platinum microbead composite.

Those electrodes deliver a current plus they can detect electrical impulses (such as those that would be used to move the legs) in the brain.

At this year's Consumer electronics Show, the automaker announced that it will open more than 5,

"says Sun. The scientists also used a small section of their device to power a red LED,

showing that their window can find use as a transparent, self-rechargeable electrochemical battery for low-power electronics.

The breakthrough is in the new system's ability to bind titanium dioxide (Tio2) a photocatalyst that reacts under ultraviolet light.

The glass can be used as an electrode material in lithium-ion batteries to almost double the amount of time they last between charges.

while staying stable enough to be viable for use in modern-day electronics. Chief among these challenges was to harness the potential of vanadium-based compounds

#Voxel8 paves the way for 3d-printed electronics The 3d printers of today can produce objects that may be quite intricate in shape

and other electronic components in the same object to manufacture highly customizable devices such as your very own quadcopter.

Special conductive inks and the right kind of printers already make it possible to build simple parts with embedded electronics.

and used to reliably interconnect TQFP integrated circuits. The idea is that this new ink will enable users to easily wire together chips

and other electronic components within their 3d-printed objects allowing a degree of design freedom that is simply not possible through standard methods of manufacturing.

Using interchangeable cartridges the Voxel8 prints out objects in either PLA plastic or conductive silver ink.

organic photovoltaics) harvesting energy from interior lighting or sunlight for various small devices and sensors that gather information from the environment.

and includes the electrodes and polymer layers where the light is collected. Furthermore, graphics can be printed to improve its visual appearance.

VTT is also developing a method to utilize light in wireless data transfer by using solar cells as data receivers.

Helplines and women refuge charities have reported a dramatic rise in the use of spyware apps to eavesdrop on the victims of domestic violence via their mobiles and other electronic devices,

or harassed using electronic devices. A second study this year by the Digital Trust, which helps victims of online stalking,

lexispy lets you conduct pycalls remotely activating the phone microphone to listen in on its surroundings. This is particularly useful once you confirm she not actually where she told you she was.

the eavesdropping technology is also available in Britain through specialist retailers and also the website of the high-street electronics retailer Maplin.

Over a period of 25 years, between 1955 and 1980, more than 50 corporations left New york city, including IBM, Gulf Oil, Texaco, Union carbide, General Telephone, Xerox, Pepsico and U s. Tobacco.

The floor was awash in the flotsam of three freshmen clothes, backpacks, homework, packages of Chips Ahoy and Cap Crunch Crunch Berries.

#Student in Kenya Invents Solar Powered Forest fire Detector Efforts to curb forest loss around the world as a means of cutting carbon emissions just got a boost:

uses heat sensors to detect a fire, then automatically relays the information to a forest station through mobile phone technology. he heat sensors are programmed to detect temperatures which are over 45 degrees Celsius,

said the soft-spoken inventor. emperature from the sun does not go beyond this level in terms of heating

Katana altered sensor levels to detect body temperate and then touched the sensor with his finger.

That immediately triggered a call to his mobile phone. his is how the system is expected to work,

the electrical and electronics engineering student said, calling it a lug and playdevice. The device still has to go through a vetting

and Samsung have teamed-up with Barclaycard to provide mobile phone payments with the new uick Tappayment technology.

Courtesy of Barclaycard, Orange and Samsung, consumers across the UK can now pay for goods and services with nothing more than a mobile phone.

Orange customers, with a Barclaycard who took the trouble to buy a specially made Samsung Tocco handset can take advantage of the new systems.

they can create ultra-sensitive detectors for explosives such as TNT, as well as at least two different types of pesticides.

This means that bees and their stingers could become important to making better environmental sensors.

The new sensors are hypersensitive to explosives with the ability to detect even single molecules of the chemicals,

The sensors can provide experts with a ingerprintof each explosive as well as the state of its breakdown.

But the sensors aren just useful for explosives the researchers found that the coated nanotubes can also detect two pesticides that contain nitro-aromatic compounds.

This means the sensors can be useful not only to anyone from airport security officials to military troops,

but also could be useful environmental sensors. It certainly an interesting use of venom especially after we recently saw that scorpion venom can be used to create pesticides.

Strano has filed for a patent on the sensor, and the team is still working out a compression system to ensure that any molecules in the air come into contact with the tubes

But the team is hopeful that the sensors could become a commercial product in the near future.

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