Category Archives: Applications

SiTime Corporation announced it has expanded its global footprint to support its rapid growth with the opening of a new Center of Excellence in Michigan.

“SiTime’s mission is to solve the most difficult timing challenges for our customers,” said Rajesh Vashist, CEO of SiTime. “To fulfil our mission, SiTime’s strategy is to deliver leading-edge solutions by employing the best talent in communities that offer the highest quality of life. Our Michigan Center is near many world-class universities. The rich talent pool in the region, especially in engineering, will help us accelerate our product development. Additionally, Michigan is at the forefront of connected and autonomous vehicle innovation, which is of strategic importance to SiTime. Our proximity and collaborative cooperation with the industry will extend our leadership in automotive timing solutions. We look forward to SiTime Michigan becoming a key contributor to our success.”

By combining unique MEMS and analog technology with a fabless semiconductor model and significant knowhow, SiTime has transformed the timing industry over the past decade. Today, SiTime sets the benchmark in performance, reliability, size, and flexibility, and is the preferred timing supplier for high-performance electronics. SiTime has cumulatively shipped 1 billion units since 2005 and has 90% share of the MEMS timing market. To support this rapid global growth and fuel innovation, SiTime has a significant presence worldwide, including China, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Taiwan, and Ukraine.

In Michigan, to assist with office space location, new talent acquisition, and business support services, SiTime collaborated with Ann Arbor SPARK, a non-profit economic development organization.

“The Ann Arbor region is a unique place where business intersects with advanced research, out-of-the-box thinkers, abundant financial resources, vibrant economic development and an immense talent pool,” said Paul Krutko, president/CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK. “We are thrilled to work with SiTime to help them get settled and to find the talent that will fuel their continued growth, while further energizing our technology sector.”

The future of electronic devices lies partly within the “internet of things” – the network of devices, vehicles and appliances embedded within electronics to enable connectivity and data exchange. University of Illinois engineers are helping realize this future by minimizing the size of one notoriously large element of integrated circuits used for wireless communication – the transformer.

Three-dimensional rolled-up radio frequency transformers take 10 to 100 times less space, perform better when the power transfer ratio increases and have a simpler fabrication process than their 2-D progenitors, according to a paper detailing their design and performance in the journal Nature Electronics.

“Transformers are one of the largest and heaviest elements on any circuit board,” said principal investigator Xiuling Li, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. “When you pick up an LED light bulb, it feels heavy for its size and that is in part because of the bulky transformer inside. The size of these transformers may become a key obstacle to overcome in the future for wireless communication and IoT.”

Transformers use coiled wires to convert input signals to specific output signals for use in devices like microchips. Previous researchers have developed some radio frequency transformers using a stacked conducting material to solve the space problem, but these have limited performance potential. This limited performance is due to inefficient magnetic coupling between coils when they have a high turns ratio, meaning that the primary coil is much longer than the secondary coil, or vice versa, Li said. These stacked transformers need to be made using special materials and are difficult to fabricate, bulky and unbendable – things that are far from ideal for internet of things devices.

The new transformer design uses techniques Li’s group previously developed for making rolled inductors. “We are making 3-D structures using 2-D processing,” Li said. The team deposits carefully patterned metal wires onto stretched 2-D thin films. Once they release the tension, the 2-D films self-roll into tiny tubes, allowing the primary and secondary wires to coil and nest perfectly inside each other into a much smaller area for optimum magnetic induction and coupling.

The nested 3-D architecture leads to high turns ratio coils, Li said. “A high turns ratio transformer can be used as an impedance transformer to improve the sensitivity of extremely low power receivers, which are expected to be a key enabler for IoT wireless front ends,” said electrical and computer engineering professor and co-author Songbin Gong.

Rolled transformers can also receive and process higher frequency signals than the larger devices.

“Wireless communication will be faster and use higher-frequency signals in the future. The current generation of radio frequency transformers simply cannot keep up with the miniaturization requirements and high-frequency operation of the future,” said lead author and postdoctoral researcher Wen Huang. “Smaller transformers with more turns allow for better reception of faster, high-frequency wireless signals, as well as high-level integration in IoT applications.”

The new transformers have a robust fabrication process – stable beyond standard foundry temperatures and compatible with industry-standard materials. This study used gold wire, but the team has successfully demonstrated the fabrication of their rolled devices using industry-standard copper.

“The next step will be to use thinner and more-conductive metal such as graphene, allowing these devices to be made even smaller and more flexible. This advancement may make it possible for the devices to be woven into the fabrics of high-tech wearables,” Li said.

Cadence Design Systems, Coventor, X-FAB and Reutlingen University announced the grand prize winner of the Global MEMS Design Contest 2018 at CDNLive EMEA 2018, the Cadence annual user conference. A team from ESIEE Paris and Sorbonne University received the grand prize award for designing an innovative MEMS-based energy harvesting product using electrostatic transduction. Energy harvesting products can be used in implantable medical devices and other portable electronics that need to operate without an external power source.

The winning team received a $5,000 cash prize along with a complimentary one-year license of CoventorMP™ MEMS design software. In addition, X-FAB will fabricate the team’s winning design using the X-FAB XMB10 MEMS manufacturing process.

The design contest was launched two years ago at the 2016 Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) conference, with the goal of encouraging the development of imaginative concepts in MEMS and mixed-signal design. Contest submissions were received from around the world, and three semifinalist teams were selected in February 2018 to compete for the grand prize. A panel of industry professionals and respected academics selected the grand prize winner based upon the degree of innovation demonstrated in the hardware and methodology, the novelty of the application, adherence to the design flow and the educational value of the submission.

“We are extremely excited to be working with the team from ESIEE and Sorbonne to manufacture their energy harvesting product,” said Volker Herbig, vice president, BU MEMS at X-FAB. “The design rules and process specifications provided in X-FAB and Coventor’s MEMS PDK, along with Cadence technology, should help ensure ‘first-time-right’ manufacturing of the winning team’s design. We look forward to bringing the winning contestant’s innovative thinking to life, using our well-tested open-platform MEMS and CMOS manufacturing technologies.”

“We are very pleased that the contestants used the CoventorMP design environment and XMB10 MEMS PDK to create and model their designs,” said Dr. Stephen Breit, Vice President of Engineering at Coventor, a Lam Research Company. “We’re looking forward to X-FAB’s successful manufacturing of the winning team’s design, which will demonstrate how this new approach can reduce the cost and time of developing new MEMS products.”

“We were impressed with the high-calibre and creativity of the designs submitted,” said Sanjay Lall, Regional Vice President EMEA of Cadence. “The contestants were able to successfully simulate their combined MEMS and mixed-signal designs in the Cadence Virtuoso® Analog Design environment and use the Cadence Spectre® Circuit Simulator for their transient simulations. Choosing one winner was very difficult, as all the finalists put forward excellent projects.”

A team from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, took home the second-place prize, which included a cash award of $2,000. The team from KAUST created a MEMS resonator for oscillator, tunable filter and re-programmable logic device applications.

Third place went to a team from the University of Liege, Microsys, KU Leuven and Zhejiang University. This team created a genetic algorithm for the design of non-linear MEMS sensors with compliant mechanisms and showcased it using a capacitive MEMS accelerometer. They received a cash prize of $1,000.

In addition to the cash prizes, all three semifinalists had the opportunity to present their winning entries to an audience of design professionals at the CDNLive EMEA 2018 conference.

For more details regarding the winning teams and their contest entries, please visit the MEMS Design Contest website.

 

ON Semiconductor Corporation announced the expansion of their manufacturing facility in Rochester, New York. The site develops and manufactures image sensor devices for commercial, industrial and professional imaging applications, including machine vision, surveillance, traffic monitoring, medical and scientific imaging, and photography.

ON Semiconductor is a global company with manufacturing facilities around the world – the end-to-end manufacturing strategy at the Rochester location enables success in these specialized markets. Located on a 4.2-acre site with over 260,000 square feet of building space, the expanded facility supports all four disciplines of the semiconductor business, wafer fab, wafer probe, assembly, and test and packaging operations for specialized high-performance CCD and CMOS image sensors.

“Not only is the screen on your smart phone or TV likely inspected with image sensors manufactured at the Lake Avenue site, but image sensors manufactured at this facility are also on the surface of Mars, orbiting Jupiter and the Moon, and used in commercial satellites that monitor the Earth’s surface,” said Michael Miller, general manager and director of operations at ON Semiconductor. “This expansion would have not been possible without the support and grant from Empire State Development and their willingness to partner with us. We owe them a debt of gratitude, thank you Governor Cuomo.”

“Manufacturing is a core competency for ON Semiconductor and the majority of ON Semiconductor’s manufacturing operations are done internally through the company’s industry leading cost structure,” said Bill Schromm, executive vice president and chief operating officer. “This expansion is important to our company, as it significantly increases our assembly capacity at the ON Semiconductor Rochester location.”

“Rochester is known for its innovations in digital imaging, including the design and development of state-of-the art image sensors over the past decades. Assembly and test has always been a key part of the equation, and as the resolution and complexity of the sensors continues to increase, these operations have become critical,” said Herb Erhardt, general manager, Industrial Solutions Division. “The increased level of capability and capacity enabled by this expansion is our answer to meeting these critical market needs, and the fact that we are doing it here in Rochester speaks to the capabilities of the teams we build here.”

The expansion is due in part to partnerships with local and state officials, including the Mayor and County Executive, Governor’s office and state officials, as well as members of Congress, all recognizing the opportunity to grow the local economy and leverage the unique advantages that Rochester can bring.

Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Bob Duffy said, “Rochester Chamber congratulates member ON Semiconductor on the opening of its new assembly and test operation. With its global customer base, ON Semiconductor is a terrific example of the Rochester and Finger Lakes region’s emerging high-tech economy. Rochester Chamber stands ready to assist ON Semiconductor in any way that it can to help the company along on its path of growth and prosperity.”

“High-tech companies like ON Semiconductor recognize the highly skilled workforce that can be tapped into in the Finger Lakes,” said Howard Zemsky, president, CEO and commissioner at Empire State Development. “ON Semiconductor’s Eastman Business Park expansion is yet another great addition to the innovation ecosystem being established in the region.”

“Businesses like ON Semiconductor are bolstering the reputation of Rochester as a target area for high-tech investment,” said Lieutenant Governor of New York Kathy Hochul. “There is an enthusiasm throughout the City and the region that is contagious. Our economic investments have built new buildings and provided new job opportunities for residents of the Finger Lakes region. Most importantly, the Finger Lakes Forward strategy has brought back hope. I thank ON Semiconductor for their investment and continuing to believe in the Rochester community.”

The site celebrated the grand opening of the ON Semiconductor Assembly and Test facility with a ribbon-cutting, Wednesday May 9, 2018 at 11 a.m. WHAM-TV news anchor Ginny Ryan presided as the master of ceremonies for the event. Special guests included: Lt Governor Kathy Hochul, Howard Zemsky, president and CEO of Empire State Development, Robert Duffy, president and CEO of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, Rochester City Mayor Lovely Warren, Vincent Esposito, Regional Director – Finger Lakes – Rochester Region Empire State Development and Monroe County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo.

ON Semiconductor is focused on energy efficient innovations in an effort to reduce global energy use. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio of over 80,000 energy efficient power management, analog, sensors, logic, timing, connectivity, discrete, SoC and custom devices utilized in, computing, consumer, industrial, medical and military/aerospace applications. The company operates a network of manufacturing facilities, sales offices and design centers which are located in key markets throughout North America, Europe and in the Asia Pacific region.

Houston Methodist researchers developed a new lab-on-a-chip technology that could quickly screen possible drugs to repair damaged neuron and retinal connections, like what is seen in people with macular degeneration or who’ve had too much exposure to the glare of electronic screens.

In the May 9 issue of Science Advances, researchers led by Houston Methodist Research Institute nanomedicine faculty member Lidong Qin, Ph.D., explain how they created a sophisticated retina cell network on a chip that is modeled after a human’s neural network. This will further the quest for finding the right drug to treat such retinal diseases.

“Medical treatments have advanced but there is still no perfect drug to cure any one of these diseases. Our device can screen drugs much faster than previous technologies. With the new technology and a few years’ effort, the potential to develop a new drug is highly possible,” said Qin.

Named the NN-Chip, the high-throughput platform consists of many channels that can be tailored to imitate large brain cell networks as well as focus on individual neural cells, such as those found in the retina. Using extremely bright light to selectively damage retina photoreceptors in the device, they discovered the damaged cells are not only difficult to recover but also cause neighboring cells to quickly die.

“This so-called ‘bystander killing effect’ in retina cone photoreceptors leads us to believe that once retina cells are severely damaged, the killing effect will spread to other healthy cells which can cause irrevocable damage,” said Qin. “What surprised us was how quickly the killing effect progressed in the experimental model. Damage went from 100 cells to 10, 000 cells in 24 hours.”

The NN-Chip is an improvement on Qin’s BloC-Printing technology, which allowed researchers to print living cells onto any surface in any shape within the confines of a mold. With this latest iteration, Qin’s lab loaded and tested cells with micro-needles in an open dish so they could tailor the neural network device, study individual cells as well as the progression of drugs through the platform’s many channels.

Retinal degeneration is a leading cause of blindness that, together with glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa, and age-related macular degeneration, will affect 196 million people worldwide in 2020.

Qin hopes the platform will have additional applications in creating models for Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s diseases and screening therapeutic drugs.

Microfluidics focuses on the behavior of fluids through micro-channels, as well as the technology of manufacturing micro devices containing chambers and tunnels to house fluids. In addition to the BloC-Printing chip, Qin’s lab at Houston Methodist also successfully developed a nonconventional lab-on-a-chip technology called the V-Chip for point-of-care diagnostics, making it possible to bring tests to the bedside, remote areas, and other types of point-of-care needs.

SMI (Silicon Microstructures, Inc.) introduces the SM933X Series of ultra low MEMS pressure sensor systems. The fully temperature compensated and pressure calibrated sensor with pressure ranges as low as 125 Pa (0.50 inH2O) enables precise pressure sensing in HVAC, industrial and medical applications. Industry leading output accuracy (1% FS) and long term stability is achieved by combining SMI’s proprietary MEMS pressure transducer with a state-of-the-art signal-conditioning IC in one package.

The differential pressure sensor system is available in two configurations: SM9333, with a pressure range of +/- 125 Pa (0.50 inH2O), and SM9336, with a pressure range of +/- 250 Pa (1 inH2O). The total accuracy after board mount and system level Autozero is less than 1%FS over the full compensated temperature range of -20 to 85ºC. The 16 bit resolution provides the ability to resolve signals as small as 0.0038 Pa. The excellent warm-up behavior and long term stability further assures its expected performance over the life of the part.

The system supply ranges from 3.0 to 5.5V and it is well suited for low power applications with its low current consumption and available sleep mode. The ASIC architecture and higher order noise filtering provides low noise and extremely low EMI susceptibility.

The small SO16 package with dual vertical port allows for easy system integration and pressure connection, while the MEMS sensor itself is robust with high burst pressure and virtually no mounting or vibration sensitivity.

 

Key applications: HVAC, CPAP and pressure transmitters

The SM933X is the best solution for flow sensing applications, delivering high performance regardless of the tubing length and is not affected by particles in the airflow. It is versatilely applicable as an HVAC sensor, to determine the air flow in variable air volume (VAV) systems and detection of filter cleanliness in eg. air handling units (AHU).

In the medical market ultra low pressure sensors are used for CPAP flow sensing. The integration and use in CPAP devices is eased by the insensitivity of the sensor to the mounting orientation, its high resolution and low noise performance. Furthermore the SM933X improves pressure measurement in industrial applications, replacing costly, bulky equipment consisting of several components with one single sensor system in a small outline package and inherent long term stability. Key applications include pressure transmitters and pressure switches.

“SMI has had a tradition of being on the cutting edge of MEMS low pressure sensors dating back to the mid 90’s. With the launch of the SM933X series, the company looks to extend that leadership into its 3rd decade,” says Omar Abed, President and CEO of SMI. “We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from our lead customers. We are convinced that the launch of this new product line will set the benchmark for ultra-low pressure sensors below 2 inH2O and usher in a new wave of innovation in medical and industrial flow and ultra-low pressure applications.”

By Heidi Hoffman, Sr. Director of FHE, MEMS and Sensors Marketing, SEMI

Peel-and-stick simplicity isn’t just for adhesive bandages any more. IoT and flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) are bound to change hardware business models. And flexible displays will breathe life into any surface.

These were among the insights foreshadowing the future of the FHE, electronic textiles, IoT, MEMS and sensors industries at the FLEX Japan and MEMS & Sensors Forum Japan 2018. At the April event, organized by SEMI-FlexTech-MSIG, nearly 200 attendees shared their observations and lessons learned in the development of processes, products and applications. Presentations and discussions revealed these five takeaways.

1. Expect the unexpected with FHE development

Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE) continues to shrink the size and weight of products, enabling new markets and concepts. “FHE takes printed electronics and adds ICs for getting performance out of the PE structure,” said Wilfried Bair of NextFlex, adding that “peel- and-stick electronic products are one example of unexpected new markets enabled by FHE capabilities.” One potential application is large peel-and-stick safety sensors adhered to buildings to warn of structural dangers.

2018FLEX Japan

 

Another surprising turn: With new insights into OLED technology originally developed for flexible displays, Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) has devised an innovative medical diagnostic tool for markets such as biomedical and agricultural monitoring. The tool features an atmosphere-processable OLED component with a simplified OLED structure encapsulated in aluminum foil.

2. IoT and FHE devices should change hardware business models

This is the standard business model for many new FHE products: develop a product, manufacture it, find customers and sell. FHE and IOT device developers were encouraged by Jam Kahn of Gemalto to consider flipping the script: During FHE product development, explore building an after-market revenue stream by controlling and mining the data for trends it reveals. Because of its data harvesting potential, IoT is an excellent emerging technology for this strategy.

The “Experience Economy” could create 200 connectable items per person, generating strong revenue streams from the collection and analysis of massive amounts of sensor-generated data. The key is for the data to be actionable. That means hardware suppliers must extend their focus to software development. “A recent study of California investors found that by 2025, 60 percent of global business profits will be from data,“ noted Harri Koopla of VTT, who advised hardware producers to examine business models that produce continuous value by leveraging software. “With FHE, we are creating the path to digitization for non-digital industries, and these industries need complete solutions,” he said.

Xenoma smartshirt features

 

Hardware provider Xenoma, for example, sells an electronic shirt with sensors for measuring muscle movements, heart rate and other health-related data. Xenoma’s Ichiro Amimori said the company offers its open-source software development kit for free under one condition: The developer must share the collection data with Xenoma. The idea is that the more data collected, the greater Xenoma’s ability to improve human health over the long term and achieve its long-term vision of alleviating disease.

3. Roll-to-roll and sheet-to-sheet manufacturing will meet in the middle

One of the big advantages of flexible and printed electronics was its promise to enable the manufacturing of electronics on a roll-to-roll (R2R) process in atmospheric (or close) conditions, like newspaper, rather than one sheet at a time, as with displays or wafers. But as development of inks and interconnects progressed, along with the placement of discrete and thinned-die components and basic flexible substrates on a moving web, most research and development (R&D) and limited-production runs moved to sheet-fed systems to control material costs for experiments and low-volume production. R&D on printing electronics processes split into two camps: the simple printed components camp on R2R, and the camp backing more flexible hybrid electronics development on a sheet-by-sheet basis. But progress didn’t stop.

R2R functional testing

 

Harri Koopla of VTT highlighted new R2R inspection and test capabilities in the VTT pilot line in Finland. R2R processing advances incorporate ideas from biology, chemistry, optics, optoelectronics, advanced inspection and test capability, illustrating the multidisciplinary nature of FHE. While accurate, high-speed, pick and place of thinned, bare die remains the domain of sheet-to-sheet manufacturing, look for more improvements in accuracy and speed.

Another new manufacturing concept that turns business models on their heads – “minimal fabs” – focuses on creating limited-run equipment and processes that use 3D printing and do not require cleanrooms. With a relatively low cost of entry, the approach enables electronics to be produced affordably anywhere.

4. Powering the IoT is a grand challenge

The requirement for edge devices to function without intervention for long periods raises hard questions about how to power the devices. Using organic photovoltaics (OPV) in textiles to harvest energy from light could be one solution, according to Kasimaesttro Sugino of the Suminoe Textile Technical Center.  

ULVAC’s answer to the IoT power issue are requirements for edge device micro-batteries to be environmentally benign, safe, flexible and compatible with semiconductor processing less than .1 mm in height. The micro-batteries must also feature a long life and support continuous power output, high power density, low self-discharge (over 10 years) and mass production, said Shunsuke Sasaki of ULVAC. The batteries are being built on silicon, glass and stainless steel with dry, thin-film vacuum processing.

5. Flexible displays bring any surface to life

With their durability, flexibility, low-cost processing and programmability, flexible displays can transform any surface into a content-rich display with messages that make lives healthier, simpler and safer.

FlexEnable

 

One example is FlexEnable’s organic thin-film transistor (OTFT), a device made possible not only by recent advances such as the ability to build organic material transistors on plastic and the increasing clarity of new film materials but by continuous manufacturing process improvements. These advances are improving switching times and the color and video capabilities of thin-film transistors while retaining their flexibility, low power consumption and communication capabilities. Simon Jone of FlexEnable gave the examples of wrapping a display around the blind spots of automobiles or replacing side-view mirrors with interior monitors showing feeds from an external camera, approaches that would improve safety while reducing wind drag and increasing fuel efficiency.

E Ink’s reflective technology and flexible products are coming to market with a wider color spectrum. The company’s Michael McCreary said its designers are specifying the panels for innovative projects such as the exterior walls of the San Diego International Airport parking garage. Used to communicate with airport visitors, the installation is weather-proof, programmable and self-powered.

Originally published on the SEMI blog.

Analog Devices, Inc. awarded Bob Reay, Leonard Shtargot, Jesper Steensgaard, and Sam Zhang the title of Analog Devices Fellow, a distinguished technical position given to engineers who contribute significantly to the company’s success through exceptional innovation, leadership and an unparalleled ability to unite and mentor others.

“These Fellows exemplify Analog Devices’ unwavering commitment to technological innovation,” said Ray Stata, cofounder and chairman of the board, Analog Devices. “Bob and Leonard hold numerous patents and have mentored many budding innovators. Jesper has a diverse skill set that makes him not only an exceptional engineer, but a passionate teacher and leader. Sam, through his incredible work on inertial MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) sensors, has helped Analog Devices introduce groundbreaking sensors used in a wide range of applications and industries.”

Bob Reay
Bob is an innovator, technologist, teacher and historian who earned both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. During his 30 years at Linear Technology Corp. (LTC), which is now part of Analog Devices, Bob was granted 22 patents. He is credited with helping to build LTC’s CMOS Interface business, opening the company’s first remote design center in Singapore, and serving as the first vice president and general manager of LTC’s Mixed-Signal business unit. Bob’s thoughtful and well-reasoned approach to problem solving has led people to seek his advice for technical and strategic challenges alike.

Leonard Shtargot
Leonard joined Linear Technology in 2001 as a design engineer with a B.S. EECS from the University of California at Berkeley. Leonard has contributed innovations in power conversion technology and designed several families of high-performance DC/DC switching regulators focusing on new circuits, high-voltage silicon process improvements, advanced flip-chip package designs, and test techniques. These products have been widely adopted by the automotive and industrial technology sectors. Leonard is also a hands-on teacher who mentors other engineers and often can be found in the lab or test floor helping his colleagues solve technical problems.

Jesper Steensgaard
Jesper is another alumnus of Linear Technology and earned his Ph.D. from the Technical University of Denmark in 1999. With 22 U.S. patents, Jesper has contributed to the release of 79 high-performance, successive-approximation-register A/D converters since 2007 and spearheaded the development of a new line of “intrinsically-linear” SAR A/D converters with performance levels that are now the best in the industry. He excels at both detailed circuit design and system-level concepts. Jesper was the founder of his own company, Esion LLC, and has held academic positions at Columbia University and Oregon State University.

Sam Zhang
Sam joined Analog Devices in 2001 after earning a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University and a M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the George Washington University. He has been awarded 21 U.S. patents with another five pending. For more than a decade, Sam has been the principal designer of ADI’s low-G inertial MEMS products, including the company’s first 3-axis accelerometer and MEMS microphone products. He also led the design of several generations of high-performance 3-axis accelerometer products and created a design methodology that accurately predicts inertial sensor offset. His latest groundbreaking contributions have been in the areas of ultra-low noise accelerometers and condition-based monitoring sensors that are re-shaping the way machine health is being addressed.

For years, manufacturers have offered computers with increasing amounts of memory packed into smaller devices. But semiconductor companies can’t reduce the size of memory components as quickly as they used to, and current designs are not energy-efficient. Conventional memory devices use transistors and rely on electric fields to store and read out information. An alternative approach being heavily investigated uses magnetic fields to store information. One promising version of magnetic device relies on the magnetoelectric effect which allows an electric field to switch the magnetic properties of the devices. Existing devices, however, tend to require large magnetic and electric fields that are difficult to produce and contain.

One potential solution for this problem is a new switching element made from chromia (Cr2O3), which, one day, may be used in computer memory and flash drives. “The device has better potential for scaling, so it could be made smaller, and would use less energy once it’s suitably refined,” said Randall Victora, a researcher at the University of Minnesota and an author on the paper. The researchers report their findings in Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing.

Computer memory is composed of switching elements, tiny devices that can switch on and off to store bits of information as ones and zeros. Previous researchers discovered that chromia’s magnetoelectric properties means it can be “switched” with only an electric field, but switching requires the presence of a static magnetic field. Building on these elements, Victora and Rizvi Ahmed have created a design for a memory device with a heart of chromia that does not require any externally applied magnetic field to operate.

Their design surrounds the chromia with magnetic material. This provides an effective magnetic field through quantum mechanical coupling to Cr magnetic moments, while allowing devices to be arranged in a way that blocks stray magnetic fields from affecting nearby devices. An element to read out the state of the device, to determine if it’s in one or zero state, is placed on top of the device. This could potentially pack more memory into a smaller space because the interface between the chromia and the magnet is the key to the coupling that makes the device function. As the device shrinks, the greater surface area of the interface relative to its volume improves the operation. This property is an advantage over conventional semiconductors, where increases in surface area as size shrinks lead to greater charge leakage and heat loss.

Next, Victora and Ahmed aim to collaborate with colleagues who work with chromia to build and test the device. If successfully fabricated, then the new device could potentially replace dynamic random access memory in computers.

“DRAM is a huge market. It provides the fast memory inside the computer, but the problem is that it leaks a lot of charge, which makes it very energy-inefficient,” Victora said. DRAM is also volatile, so information disappears once the power source is interrupted, like when a computer crash erases an unsaved document. This device, as described in the paper, would be nonvolatile.

However, such a memory device will likely take years to perfect. One significant barrier is the device’s heat tolerance. Computers generate a lot of heat, and modeling predicts that the device would stop functioning around 30 degrees Celsius, the equivalent of a hot summer day. Optimizing the chromia, perhaps by doping it with other elements, may improve its functioning and make it more suitable to replace existing memory devices.

 

In a Nature Communications paper published this week (https://rdcu.be/MYO6), imec, the world-leading research and innovation hub in nano-electronics and digital technology, describes a new concept for direct identification of single DNA bases. The technique has the potential to detect, with an unprecedented spatial resolution and without any labeling, the genetic code, as well as epigenetic variations in DNA. The combination of nanopore fluidics and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy makes it a unique concept and a very promising tool for evolutionary biologists and for research on disease development.

Today, direct, real-time identification of nucleobases in DNA strands in nanopores is limited by the sensitivity and the spatial resolution of established ionic sensing strategies. In addition, established DNA sequencing techniques often use fluorescent labeling which is costly and time-consuming. In its Nature Communications paper, imec demonstrated a promising alternative based on optical spectroscopy, with no need for labeling and with the unique ability to identify nucleobases, individually, and incorporated in a DNA strand. The technique is based on nanofluidics to drive the DNA strand through an engineered plasmonic nanoslit, and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy to make a ‘fingerprint’ of the adsorbed nucleobases up to the level of molecular bonds. The spectroscopic signal is enhanced both by a gold coating on top of the nanoslit, and the engineered shape of the nanoslit.  “The result reported here is an important step towards a solution for fast and direct sequencing up to the epigenetic level,” stated and Chang Chen, senior researcher at imec.

The signal generated by Raman spectroscopy holds a lot of information about the molecules and the molecular bonds. Not only can the DNA code be ‘read’, but also base modifications such as methylation, histone acetylation, and microRNA modification, which carry more detailed information about epigenetic variations. Such variations are important for evolutionary studies as they influence gene expression in cells. Moreover, they have been shown to impact the origin and development of diseases such as cancer.

“We leverage our world-class expertise in chip design and 300 mm Si wafer manufacturing technology and bio-lab facilities to develop tailored solutions for the life sciences industry,” stated Pol Van Dorpe, principal member of technical staff. “The solution we describe here is only one example of the technologies we are working on. Our toolbox includes knowledge on nanopores, spectroscopy, photonics, single-molecule detection and nanofluidics which we use in developing next-generation solutions for our industry partners in genomics and diagnostics.