Category Archives: Advanced Packaging

Researchers at Umeå University, together with researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University, show in a new study how nitrogen-doped graphene can be rolled into perfect Archimedean nano scrolls by adhering magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles on the surface of the graphene sheets. The new material may have very good properties for application as electrodes in for example Li-ion batteries.

Read more: Graphene sees explosive demand in a variety of industries

Graphene is one of the most interesting materials for future applications in everything from high performance electronics, optical components to flexible and strong materials. Ordinary graphene consists of carbon sheets that are single or few atomic layers thick.

graphene nanoscrolls

In the study the researchers have modified the graphene by replacing some of the carbon atoms by nitrogen atoms. By this method they obtain anchoring sites for the iron oxide nanoparticles that are decorated onto the graphene sheets in a solution process. In the decoration process one can control the type of iron oxide nanoparticles that are formed on the graphene surface, so that they either form so called hematite (the reddish form of iron oxide that often is found in nature) or maghemite, a less stable and more magnetic form of iron oxide.

“Interestingly we observed that when the graphene is decorated by maghemite, the graphene sheets spontaneously start to roll into perfect Archimedean nano scrolls, while when decorated by the less magnetic hematite nanoparticles the graphene remain as open sheets, says Thomas Wågberg, Senior lecturer at the Department of Physics at Umeå University.

The nanoscrolls can be visualized as traditional “Swiss rolls” where the sponge-cake represents the graphene, and the creamy filling is the iron oxide nanoparticles. The graphene nanoscrolls are however around one million times thinner.

The results that now have been published in Nature Communications are conceptually interesting for several reasons. It shows that the magnetic interaction between the iron oxide nanoparticles is one of the main effects behind the scroll formation. It also shows that the nitrogen defects in the graphene lattice are necessary for both stabilizing a sufficiently high number of maghemite nanoparticles, and also responsible for “buckling” the graphene sheets and thereby lowering the formation energy of the nanoscrolls.

The process is extraordinary efficient. Almost 100 percent of the graphene sheets are scrolled. After the decoration with maghemite particles the research team could not find any open graphene sheets.

Moreover, they showed that by removing the iron oxide nanoparticles by acid treatment the nanoscrolls again open up and go back to single graphene sheets

“Besides adding valuable fundamental understanding in the physics and chemistry of graphene, nitrogen-doping and nanoparticles we have reasons to believe that the iron oxide decorated nitrogen doped graphene nanoscrolls have very good properties for application as electrodes in for example Li-ion batteries, one of the most important batteries in daily life electronics, “ says Thomas Wågberg.

The study has been conducted within the “The artificial leaf” project which is funded by Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation to physicist, chemists, and plant science researchers at Umeå University.

Bruker Corporation today announced the appointment of Thomas Bachmann as the new president of its Bruker BioSpin Group. Bachmann most recently served as CEO of Tecan Group in Switzerland, a global provider of complex laboratory instrumentation and integrated liquid-handling workflow solutions for life science research and diagnostics.

The Bruker BioSpin Group is the global market and technology leader in analytical and preclinical magnetic resonance instrumentation, with major operations in Germany, Switzerland, France and the United States, as well as numerous applications and customer service centers around the world. The Bruker BioSpin Group operates in two divisions:

  • Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) division, consisting of the three business units nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and compact magnetic resonance (CMR)
  • Preclinical Imaging (PCI) division, consisting of the preclinical imaging product lines magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetic particle imaging (MPI), X-ray micro-CT, as well as optical and PET/SPECT/CT molecular imaging.

“I am very pleased to welcome Thomas Bachmann to Bruker,” said Frank Laukien, Bruker’s president and CEO. “His life-science background and his broad management experience will allow him to lead our excellent BioSpin management team in order to further accelerate our innovation, profitable growth and operational excellence initiatives. Thomas will be a valuable addition for all of Bruker due to his diversified industrial experience, his global customer and operations exposure, and his successful track record.”

“I am delighted to join Bruker, and together with an experienced management team I look forward to further developing the Bruker BioSpin Group,” Bachmann said.

Thomas Bachmann brings over twenty-five years of global experience in sales and marketing, in leading and transforming complex businesses, as well as in strategy and business development to his new role as Bruker BioSpin Group President, including experience as a CEO of two publicly traded companies. From 2005 until 2012, Bachmann served as CEO of Tecan Group, where he increased operational effectiveness, expanded into new businesses, developed emerging markets, created a solid organization, established regulatory competence and compliance, grew profitability and built a strong balance sheet. From 2002 until 2004, he was CEO of the Arbonia-Forster Group’s Steel Systems Business, a global provider of building supplies. From 1985 until 2002, Bachmann served in various roles as global Sales and Marketing Director, Business Unit Director and Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Rieter Holding, a global provider of textile machinery and plants, as well as an automotive supplier of acoustic- and thermal insulation systems. Bachmann holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and an Executive MBA from IMD Business School in Switzerland.

MIT chemical engineers have discovered that arrays of billions of nanoscale sensors have unique properties that could help pharmaceutical companies produce drugs — especially those based on antibodies — more safely and efficiently.

Using these sensors, the researchers were able to characterize variations in the binding strength of antibody drugs, which hold promise for treating cancer and other diseases. They also used the sensors to monitor the structure of antibody molecules, including whether they contain a chain of sugars that interferes with proper function.

“This could help pharmaceutical companies figure out why certain drug formulations work better than others, and may help improve their effectiveness,” says Michael Strano, an MIT professor of chemical engineering and senior author of a recent paper describing the sensors in the journal ACS Nano.

The team also demonstrated how nanosensor arrays could be used to determine which cells in a population of genetically engineered, drug-producing cells are the most productive or desirable, Strano says.

Lead author of the paper is Nigel Reuel, a graduate student in Strano’s lab. The labs of MIT faculty members Krystyn Van Vliet, Christopher Love and Dane Wittrup also contributed, along with scientists from Novartis.

Testing drug strength

Strano and other scientists have previously shown that tiny, nanometer-sized sensors, such as carbon nanotubes, offer a powerful way to detect minute quantities of a substance. Carbon nanotubes are 50,000 times thinner than a human hair, and they can bind to proteins that recognize a specific target molecule. When the target is present, it alters the fluorescent signal produced by the nanotube in a way that scientists can detect.

Read more: UC Riverside scientists discover new uses for carbon nanotubes 

Some researchers are trying to exploit large arrays of nanosensors, such as carbon nanotubes or semiconducting nanowires, each customized for a different target molecule, to detect many different targets at once. In the new study, Strano and his colleagues wanted to explore unique properties that emerge from large arrays of sensors that all detect the same thing.

The first feature they discovered, through mathematical modeling and experimentation, is that uniform arrays can measure the distribution in binding strength of complex proteins such as antibodies. Antibodies are naturally occurring molecules that play a key role in the body’s ability to recognize and defend against foreign invaders. In recent years, scientists have been developing antibodies to treat disease, particularly cancer. When those antibodies bind to proteins found on cancer cells, they stimulate the body’s own immune system to attack the tumor.

For antibody drugs to be effective, they must strongly bind their target. However, the manufacturing process, which relies on nonhuman, engineered cells, does not always generate consistent, uniformly binding batches of antibodies.

Currently, drug companies use time-consuming and expensive analytical processes to test each batch and make sure it meets the regulatory standards for effectiveness. However, the new MIT sensor could make this process much faster, allowing researchers to not only better monitor and control production, but also to fine-tune the manufacturing process to generate a more consistent product.

“You could use the technology to reject batches, but ideally you’d want to use it in your upstream process development to better define culture conditions, so then you wouldn’t produce spurious lots,” Reuel says.

Measuring weak interactions

Another useful trait of such sensors is their ability to measure very weak binding interactions, which could also help with antibody drug manufacturing.

Antibodies are usually coated with long sugar chains through a process called glycosylation. These sugar chains are necessary for the drugs to be effective, but they are extremely hard to detect because they interact so weakly with other molecules. Drug-manufacturing organisms that synthesize antibodies are also programmed to add sugar chains, but the process is difficult to control and is strongly influenced by the cells’ environmental conditions, including temperature and acidity.

Without the appropriate glycosylation, antibodies delivered to a patient may elicit an unwanted immune response or be destroyed by the body’s cells, making them useless.

“This has been a problem for pharmaceutical companies and researchers alike, trying to measure glycosylated proteins by recognizing the carbohydrate chain,” Strano says. “What a nanosensor array can do is greatly expand the number of opportunities to detect rare binding events. You can measure what you would otherwise not be able to quantify with a single, larger sensor with the same sensitivity.”

This tool could help researchers determine the optimal conditions for the correct degree of glycosylation to occur, making it easier to consistently produce effective drugs.

Mapping production

The third property the researchers discovered is the ability to map the production of a molecule of interest. “One of the things you would like to do is find strains of particular organisms that produce the therapeutic that you want,” Strano says. “There are lots of ways of doing this, but none of them are easy.”

The MIT team found that by growing the cells on a surface coated with an array of nanometer-sized sensors, they could detect the location of the most productive cells. In this study, they looked for an antibody produced by engineered human embryonic kidney cells, but the system could also be tailored to other proteins and organisms.

Once the most productive cells are identified, scientists look for genes that distinguish those cells from the less productive ones and engineer a new strain that is highly productive, Strano says.

The researchers have built a briefcase-sized prototype of their sensor that they plan to test with Novartis, which funded the research along with the National Science Foundation.

“Carbon nanotubes coupled to protein-binding entities are interesting for several areas of bio-manufacturing as they offer great potential for online monitoring of product levels and quality. Our collaboration has shown that carbon nanotube-based fluorescent sensors are applicable for such purposes, and I am eager to follow the maturation of this technology,” says Ramon Wahl, an author of the paper and a principal scientist at Novartis.

Booming demand for low-priced 7.x-inch products helped shipments of panels used in media tablets to more than double in in the first quarter, according to an the new report entitled “Tablet PC Touch Panel Shipment Database” from information and analytics provider IHS.

Global shipments of capacitive touch screen displays for media tablets amounted to 45.2 million units in the first quarter. This represented a remarkable 111.9 percent increase compared to the same period last year, more than doubling the 21.3 million total in the first quarter of 2012. While shipments were down 13 percent compared to the fourth quarter, such a seasonal decline is typical for electronics in the first quarter.

Read more: IHS boost tablet panel shipments forecast

“Sales of smaller-sized tablets are rising at a rapid rate, driving shipments of capacitive touch screen displays ranking in size from 7- to 8-inches,” said Duke Yi, senior manager for display components and materials research at IHS. “These tablets are inexpensive, with pricing at $199, making them popular among consumers. With the level of competition increasing in both the tablet and panel markets, pricing is expected to continue to decline, boosting shipments of displays and end products in this size range.”

With the increasing number of panel makers, the average selling price (ASP) of tablet PC touch panel modules is falling at a fast rate. In the first quarter of 2013, average pricing of 7.0-inch tablet touch panels fell to $15.60, down a sharp 16 percent from $18.60 in the first quarter of 2012. Pricing for 7.0-inch touch panels dropped by 7.5 percent from $15.60 in the fourth quarter, the largest sequential percentage decrease of any size.

At the end of the first quarter of 2013, display supplier TPK achieved a 29 percent market share in the tablet touch screen market because of its strong cadre of leading stable clients, such as Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Microsoft and Asus—including the Nexus 7. This gave the company the leading position in the tablet touch panel market in terms of unit shipments.

The runner up was Iljin Display, the biggest supplier of tablet PC touch panels for Samsung Electronics, which accounted for 15.5 percent of market shipments in the first quarter of 2013, up from 7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2012.

GIS, the touch panel subsidiary of Foxconn Technology Group, is steadily increasing its supply of touch panels for Apple Inc.’s iPad and iPad mini. At the same time, GIS is supplying 8.9-inch touch panels for the Amazon Kindle Fire HD.

Read more: Global touch-screen panel shipments to double by 2016

On the strength of these deals, GIS in the first quarter attained a 13.3 percent share of shipments, up from 12.8 percent in the fourth quarter, and just 7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2012.

Wintek once held the second place in the market because it shared in supplying of touch displays for the Apple iPad with TPK. However, with the rise of GIS, Wintek’s share has fallen. The company’s market share plummeted to 8.5 percent in the first quarter of this year.

Meanwhile, China’s O-Film quickly reacted to the low-priced 7-inch tablet PC touch market, resulting in the company making great strides quarter after quarter. The company at the end of the first quarter in 2013.arrived in Top 5 with an 8.5 percent market share.

Pixy is a small camera about half the size of a business card that can detect objects that you "train" it to detect. Training is accomplished by holding the object in front of Pixy’s lens and pressing a button. Pixy then finds objects with similar color signatures using a dedicated dual-core processor that can process images at 50 frames per second. Pixy can report its findings, which include the sizes and locations of all detected objects, through one of several interfaces: UART serial, SPI, I2C, digital or analog I/O. Pixy can detect hundreds of objects from seven different color signatures.  As part of a Kickstarter campaign, Pixy is available by contributing $59 or more.

 pixy sensor

Pixy is a partnership between Carnegie Mellon University and a small Austin-based company, Charmed Labs. Pixy is the latest version of the CMUcam, a popular line of vision sensors.  The goal of Pixy is to provide a smart camera sensor that is easy to use and priced low enough, so that it can be used by a wider audience, including educators and hobbyists that currently use microcontrollers such as the popular Arduino. Pixy can connect directly to the Arduino with a simple cable. Since Pixy has its own processor, it does not bog down the Arduino’s CPU with processing images.  And since Pixy has several communication options, it can talk to practically any microcontroller, or even simple devices such as relays, servos or lights.

"We tried to make Pixy as easy to use as possible. We think this will make it popular with the robotics and maker communities," Anthony Rowe, CMU faculty member said.

"We’ve opened up the design by using the Open Source Hardware licensing model. You get source code, schematics, board layouts, everything," said Rich LeGrand, Charmed Labs President. Use of the Open Source Hardware licensing has been growing in the field of DIY robotics. "We expect almost everyone to use Pixy as-is, but we also hope that by opening up the design, others will be able to easily build on Pixy for their application," he added.

The market for semiconductors used in industrial electronics applications relished a better-than-expected first quarter as macroeconomic headwinds turned out to be less severe than initially feared, according to the latest Industrial Electronics report from information and analytics provider IHS.

Worldwide industrial electronics chip revenue in the first quarter reached $7.71 billion, up 1 percent from $7.63 billion in the final quarter of 2012. Although the uptick seemed modest, the increase marked a turnaround from the three percent decline in the fourth quarter. It also represents a major improvement compared to the 3 percent contraction of the market a year ago in the first quarter of 2011, as shown in the figure below.

 

“The industrial semiconductor market’s performance was encouraging, especially in light of continuing global economic uncertainty and the seasonal nature of the market, which typically sees slower movement in the first quarter of every year,” said Robbie Galoso, principal analyst for electronics at IHS. “Some large segments of the industry, particularly avionics and oil and gas process-automation equipment, saw muscular double-digit gains, helping to drive up overall revenue.”

In another positive development, several large industrial semiconductor suppliers also reported very lean inventories because of strong orders from customers. Infineon Technologies of Germany, Analog Devices of Massachusetts, and Dallas-based Texas Instruments all posted a sequential decline in industrial chip stockpiles as their days of inventory (DOI) measure fell well below average. Infineon achieved higher sales from increased volume in isolated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) chips; Analog Devices was strong in factory automation and medical instrumentation; and Texas Instruments saw growth in its analog products.

Other companies reporting sound increases during the period were Xilinx of California for its test and measurement, military aerospace and medical product lines; and Microsemi, also from California, which likewise enjoyed expansion in medical electronics along with broad-based growth for the period.

Europe’s woes inhibit industry, but China counters with growth

However, the industry was not without its challenges, with the Eurozone crisis causing the most havoc.

Read more: Regional developments to affect the growth of semiconductor industry

“The financial troubles on the continent, particularly in Greece, Italy and Spain, had the effect of stifling growth as a whole, especially in the commercial market for building and home control,” Galoso said. “As a result, the individual sectors for lighting, security, climate control and medical imaging were deleteriously impacted in the first quarter, compared to positive performance for those areas in the fourth quarter of 2012.

In contrast to Europe’s woes was China, which displayed growth momentum and much-improved demand across a number of industrial end markets. Manufacturers like Siemens of Germany, Philips of the Netherlands, Swiss-based ABB and Schneider Electric of France said their first-quarter sales in China improved from the earlier quarter.

In the rare earth industrial sector, however, China’s hold on the market loosened as rare earth prices started going south this year. China had a more than 90 percent monopoly on rare earth elements in the past, but new sources in Australia, the United States, Brazil, Canada and South Africa have opened up the market, decreasing dependence on China.

Products that incorporate rare earth materials include wind turbines, rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles and defense applications, including jet-fighter engines, missile guidance systems, and space satellites and communications systems.

Aerospace flies high; oil and gas equipment is also a winner

The military and civil aerospace market had the most robust performance among all industrial semiconductor segments in the first quarter. Avionics was especially vigorous, driven by commercial aircraft sales from pan-European entity EADS Airbus and U.S. maker Boeing, up 9 percent and 14 percent, respectively, on the quarter.

The oil and gas exploration market also saw solid revenue growth, with strong subsea systems and drilling equipment driving sales for ABB, Honeywell and GE.

In contrast to those high-performing segments, lackluster sales were reported in the markets for building and home control, for energy generation and distribution, and for test and measurement. One other market, manufacturing and process automation, reported stable growth, even though its sector for motor drives remained in negative territory.

Two NJIT researchers have demonstrated that using a continuum-based approach, they can explain the dynamics of liquid metal particles on a substrate of a nanoscale. "Numerical simulation of ejected molten metal nanoparticles liquified by laser irradiation: Interplay of geometry and dewetting," appeared in Physical Review Letters (July 16, 2013).

The evolution of fluid drops deposited on solid substrates has been a focus of large research effort for decades, said co-author Shahriar Afkhami, an assistant professor in the NJIT Department of Mathematical Sciences. This effort has become particularly extensive on the nanoscale, due to the relevance of nanostructures in a variety of fields, ranging from DNA sequencing to plasmonics and nano magnetism. And the research also applies to liquid crystal displays and solar panel designs."

In this work, Afkhami with NJIT Professor Lou Kondic, also in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, studied the liquid metal nanostructures placed on solid substrates. The study is of direct relevance to self- and directed-assembly of metal nanoparticles on surfaces. For example, the size and distribution of metallic particles strongly affects the yield of solar cell devices, Afkhami said.

In this work, however, the researchers demonstrate that using a continuum-based approach is appropriate on the nanoscale, where the basic assumptions of continuum fluid mechanics are pushed to the limits. The pair’s research is the first attempt to utilize state-of-the-art simulations based on continuum fluid mechanics to explain the dynamics of liquid metal particles on a substrate on the nanoscale.

"We demonstrated that continuum simulations provide a good qualitative agreement with atomistic simulations on the length scales in the range of 1-10 nm and with the physical experiments length scales measured in the range of 100 nanometers," added Kondic.

Kondic is involved in the mathematical modeling and simulating of granular materials, as well as in development of numerical methods for highly nonlinear partial differential equations related to the flows of thin liquid films. In 2005, Kondic received a Fulbright Foundation grant and traveled to Argentina to study the dynamics of non-Newtonian liquid films involving contact lines. He currently leads four federally funded projects totaling more than $800,000.

Afkhami uses computational and mathematical modeling to help researchers better understand a range of real-life engineering phenomena. His work includes examining biomedical systems, polymers and plastics, microfluidics and nano-materials. His research looks for the existence of solutions and issues involving fluid flows from stability to asymptotic behavior.

Afkhami’s current research project is to numerically discover a better way to understand the dynamics of mixtures of fluids. The effort will tie into his new three-year NSF $252,000 grant (2013-16) to develop a state-of-the-art computational framework for polymeric liquids. The fruits of this labor will eventually have a broad effect in complex applications, such as how blood and other bodily fluids flow in microfluidic devices as well as finding better ways to improve the flow of emulsions when blending or processing polymers.

A team at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering has developed a novel way to build what many see as the next generation memory storage devices for portable electronic devices including smart phones, tablets, laptops and digital cameras.

The device is based on the principles of resistive memory, which can be used to create memory cells that are smaller, operate at a higher speed and offer more storage capacity than flash memory cells, the current industry standard. Terabytes, not gigbytes, will be the norm with resistive memory.

Read more: Crossbar unveils resistive RAM with simple, three-layer structure

The key advancement in the UC Riverside research is the creation of a zinc oxide nano-island on silicon. It eliminates the need for a second element called a selector device, which is often a diode.

"This is a significant step as the electronics industry is considering wide-scale adoption of resistive memory as an alternative for flash memory," said Jianlin Liu, a professor of electrical engineering at UC Riverside who is one of the authors of the paper. "It really simplifies the process and lowers the fabrication cost."

resistive RAM; nano island on silicon
This is a series of images that shows the zinc oxide nano-island on silicon and the three modes of the operation.

The findings were published online this week in the journal Scientific Reports, which is part of Nature Publishing Group. The paper is called "Multimode Resistive Switching in Single ZnO Nanoisland System."

Liu’s co-authors were: Jing Qi, a former visiting scholar in Liu’s lab and now an associate professor at Lanzhou University in China; Mario Olmedo, who earned his Ph.D. from UC Riverside and now works at Intel; and Jian-Guo Zheng, a director of the Laboratory of Electron and X-ray Instrumentation at UC Irvine.

Flash memory has been the standard in the electronics industry for decades. But, as flash continues to get smaller and users want higher storage capacity, it appears to reaching the end of its lifespan, Liu said.

With that in mind, resistive memory is receiving significant attention from academia and the electronics industry because it has a simple structure, high-density integration, fast operation and long endurance.

Researchers have also found that resistive memory can be scaled down in the sub 10-nanometer scale. Current flash memory devices are roughly using a feature size twice as large.

Resistive memory usually has a metal-oxide-metal structure in connection with a selector device. The UC Riverside team has demonstrated a novel alternative way by forming self-assembled zinc oxide nano-islands on silicon. Using a conductive atomic force microscope, the researchers observed three operation modes from the same device structure, essentially eliminating the need for a separate selector device.

Memory devices like disk drives, flash drives and RAM play an important role in our lives. They are an essential component of our computers, phones, electronic appliances and cars. Yet current memory devices have significant drawbacks: dynamic RAM memory has to be refreshed periodically, static RAM data is lost when the power is off, flash memory lacks speed, and all existing memory technologies are challenged when it comes to miniaturization.

Increasingly, memory devices are a bottleneck limiting performance. In order to achieve a substantial improvement in computation speed, scientists are racing to develop smaller and denser memory devices that operate with high speed and low power consumption.

Prof. Yossi Paltiel and research student Oren Ben-Dor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Harvey M. Krueger Family Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, together with researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science, have developed a simple magnetization progress that, by eliminating the need for permanent magnets in memory devices, opens the door to many technological applications.

Published in Nature Communications, the research paper, A chiral-based magnetic memory device without a permanent magnet, was written by Prof. Yossi Paltiel, Oren Ben Dor and Shira Yochelis at the Department of Applied Physics, Harvey M. Krueger Family Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Shinto P. Mathew and Ron Naaman at the Department of Chemical Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science.

The research deals with the flow properties of electron charge carriers in memory devices. According to quantum mechanics, in addition to their electrical charge, electrons also have a degree of internal freedom called spin, which gives them their magnetic properties. The new technique, called magnetless spin memory (MSM), drives a current through chiral material (a kind of abundantly available organic molecule) and selectively transfers electrons to magnetize nano magnetic layers or nano particles. With this technique, the researchers showed it is possible to create a magnetic-based memory device that does not require a permanent magnet, and which could allow for the miniaturization of memory bits down to a single nanoparticle.

The potential benefits of magnetless spin memory are many. The technology has the potential to overcome the limitations of other magnetic-based memory technologies, and could make it possible to create inexpensive, high-density universal memory-on-chip devices that require much less power than existing technologies. Compatible with integrated circuit manufacturing techniques, it could allow for inexpensive, high-density universal memory-on-chip production.

According to the Hebrew University’s Prof. Paltiel, “Now that proof-of-concept devices have been designed and tested, magnetless spin memory has the potential to become the basis of a whole new generation of faster, smaller and less expensive memory technologies.”

The technology transfer companies of the Hebrew University (Yissum) and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Yeda) are working to promote the realization of this technology, by licensing its use and raising funds for further development and commercialization. With many possible applications, it has already attracted the attention of start-up funds.

The Hebrew University’s Center of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology helped with device fabrication and advice. Prof. Paltiel acknowledges the Yessumit internal grant from the Hebrew University, and Ron Naaman and Shinto P. Mathew acknowledge the support of the Minerva Foundation.

Established in 2001, the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology deals with diverse fields of nanoscience such as new materials, molecular and nano-electronics, nano-electrooptics, nanomedicine and nano-biology. The research will enable technological development of new transistors, memory elements, sensors and biosensors, renewable energy sources, directed drug delivery schemes, and more. Operating within the Faculty of Science, the Center aims to create an enabling environment for interdisciplinary research, education, technological development and commercialization of scientific achievements in the field of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, in order to participate as a leading force in the world nanotechnology revolution and contribute to Israeli academia, industry and society. The Center has almost 70 member groups and is expected to expand further through recruitment of promising young faculty members.

 

Photoresists are primarily used in the electronics industry and in high demand from the semiconductor and liquid crystal display (LCD) sectors where photolithography is a main manufacturing process. Photolithography is a very important process during chip fabrication and makes up a large portion of production costs. Although it varies depending on semiconductor types, the photolithography process generally accounts for 30 percent of memory chip manufacturing costs and 60 percent of total production time.

Read more: Price erosion accelerates for LCD TV open call panels in Q3

Reflecting the trend toward microfabrication in the semiconductor industry, photoresists have emerged as core materials. Organic photosensitive material producers, which have been participating in the industry from the beginning, are leading the development of photoresists. Those companies include JSR Corp., Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co. Ltd. (TOK), Dow Chemical Co. (formerly Rohm and Haas Co.), Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd., Sumitomo Chemical, and AZ Electronic Materials (AZEM). All major photoresist suppliers run their businesses in South Korea where the world’s top LCD and semiconductor manufacturers are based. In particular, most of major photoresist companies make every effort to supply their products to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., as it could serve as a guarantee of product quality. Samsung has the most advanced semiconductor fabrication processes in the sector.

Read more: How Samsung is climbing the charts

The consumption of photoresists by the South Korean semiconductor industry was estimated at $240 million in 2012, down from 2011 in value due to a drop in shipment volume, and it will decline further to $220 million in 2013. With the prospective adoption of high-end extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photoresist in 2014, the photoresist market is expected to post an annual growth of more than five percent in value going forward, despite a minimal volume growth.

Read more: Gigaphoton successfully achieved two hour continuous operation of its EUV light source

The number of wafer inputs into semiconductor fab lines has barely changed since the industry is increasingly adopting microfabrication process. Despite anemic growth in photoresist demand compared with the chip output increase, the rising portion of high-end ArF resists will push the photoresist market higher in terms of value. 

photoresist demand