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BISTel, a provider of intelligent, real-time data management, advanced analytics and predictive solutions for smart manufacturing announced today its first adaptive intelligence (A.I.) based applications to enable the smart connected factory or industry 4.0 as some call it. Called Dynamic Fault Detection (DFD), BISTel’s new fault detection and classification solution offers customers full sensor trace data analysis to detect and classify faults real-time, improving quality and yield significantly.

Today, customers rely on legacy FDC systems for accurate fault detection. These systems offer only summary data analysis from sensors for fault detection. Consequently, small changes in sensor behavior can go undetected, resulting in a negative impact on yield. BISTel’s new Dynamic Fault Detection (DFD®) system overcomes these challenges by offering full trace analysis. Because BISTel’s new DFD® system establishes trace references dynamically and does not rely on the traditional control limiting methods used by FDC, it eliminates modeling completely. DFD also uses smarter algorithms to better distinguish between real alarms and false alarms resulting in 10 times fewer alarms than FDC systems.

“DFD is the first of several intelligent manufacturing applications with new machine learning that will help our customers to start to realize the full potential of A.I. for smart manufacturing,” commented W.K. Choi, Founder and CEO, BISTel. “DFD enables customers to quickly and accurately identify and classify faults. DFD helps our customers create early identification of yield related issues so that they can quickly execute the fastest possible response to solving these issues.” added Choi.

Sensor trace data contains a wealth of information that helps manufacturers identify potential yield issues, including ramp rate changes, spikes, glitches, shift and drift. BISTel’s first of its kind, online Dynamic Fault Detection (DFD®) system lowers these risks by offering manufacturers real-time monitoring and detection of full sensor trace data. Customers can now quickly detect, and analyze yield impacting events and quickly resolving yield issues. DFD® also integrates seamlessly to legacy FDC systems.

Key Features and Benefits

  • Real time monitoring Improves quality and yield.
  • Reduces risk by protecting against yield impacting events.
  • Real-time fault detection with dynamic references instead of static control limits.
  • DFD’s sensor behavior analysis enables best system drift detection
  • Intelligent alarming reduces alarms by more than 10X

Developing new medicines to treat pulmonary fibrosis, one of the most common and serious forms of lung disease, is not easy.

One reason: it’s difficult to mimic how the disease damages and scars lung tissue over time, often forcing scientists to employ a hodgepodge of time-consuming and costly techniques to assess the effectiveness of potential treatments.

Now, new biotechnology reported in the journal Nature Communications could streamline the drug-testing process.

The innovation relies on the same technology used to print electronic chips, photolithography. Only instead of semiconducting materials, researchers placed upon the chip arrays of thin, pliable lab-grown lung tissues — in other words, its lung-on-a-chip technology.

“Obviously it’s not an entire lung, but the technology can mimic the damaging effects of lung fibrosis. Ultimately, it could change how we test new drugs, making the process quicker and less expensive,” says lead author Ruogang Zhao, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University at Buffalo.

The department is a multidisciplinary unit formed by UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.

With limited tools for fibrosis study, scientists have struggled to develop medicine to treat the disease. To date, there are only two drugs — pirfenidone and nintedanib — approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations that help slow its progress.

However, both drugs treat only one type of lung fibrosis: idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. There are more than 200 types of lung fibrosis, according to the American Lung Association, and fibrosis also can affect other vital organs, such as the heart, liver and kidney.

Furthermore, the existing tools do not simulate the progression of lung fibrosis over time — a drawback that has made the development of medicine challenging and relatively expensive. Zhao’s research team, which included past and present students, as well as a University of

Toronto collaborator, created the lung-on-a-chip technology to help address these issues.

Using microlithography, the researchers printed tiny, flexible pillars made of a silicon-based organic polymer. They then placed the tissue, which acts like alveoli (the tiny air sacs in the lungs that allow us to consume oxygen), on top of the pillars.

Researchers induced fibrosis by introducing a protein that causes healthy lung cells to become diseased, leading to the contraction and stiffening of the engineered lung tissue. This mimics the scarring of the lung alveolar tissue in people who suffer from the disease.

The tissue contraction causes the flexible pillars to bend, allowing researchers to calculate the tissue contraction force based on simple mechanical principles.

Researchers tested the system’s effectiveness with pirfenidone and nintedanib. While each drug works differently, the system showed the positive results for both, suggesting the lung-on-a-chip technology could be used to test a variety of potential treatments for lung fibrosis.

TowerJazz, the global specialty foundry leader, and Gpixel, Inc., a fast-growing CMOS image sensor (CIS) provider focusing on professional applications, announced today that Gpixel’s GMAX0505, a new 25Mp global shutter sensor has been developed based on TowerJazz’s 2.5um global shutter pixel in a 1.1″ optical format with the highest resolution in C-mount optics. This type of lens mount is commonly found in closed-circuit television cameras, machine vision and scientific cameras. Gpixel’s new product is optimal for high resolution industrial, machine vision, intelligent transport systems (ITS) and surveillance applications. According to an IC Insights report, the industrial CMOS sensor market is growing at a CAGR of about 18% from $400M in 2015 to $910M in 2020.

TowerJazz’s new offering is the smallest in the world; the otherwise currently available smallest pixel for such high-end applications used in the market is 3.2um (65% larger) and demonstrates overall lower performances. TowerJazz’s 2.5um global shutter pixel is integrated with a unique light pipe technology, offers great angular response, more than 80dB shutter efficiency in spite of the extreme small size, and extremely low noise (one electron). Gpixel has started prototyping its GMAX0505 using TowerJazz’s state of the art, 65nm technology on a 300mm platform in its Uozu, Japan facility.

“TowerJazz has been an important and strategic fab partner of Gpixel for many years. We are very pleased with the support of great technology innovation from TowerJazz with our current global shutter sensor families, backside illuminated scientific CMOS sensor solutions and today, the next generation global shutter industrial sensor product family,” said Dr. Xinyang Wang, CEO of Gpixel, Inc. “The GMAX0505 is our second product after our first 2.8um pixel product that is already ramped up into production at TowerJazz’s Arai fab in Japan. We are very excited and looking forward to seeing more products using this pixel technology in the near future. The successful introduction of the new 25Mp product will bring our customers a unique advantage in the growing demand of machine vision applications.”

Dr. Avi Strum, TowerJazz Senior VP and General Manager of CMOS Image Sensor Business Unit, said, “We are very excited to be the first and only foundry in the world to offer this new technology – the smallest global shutter pixel available. Through our collaboration with Gpixel, we are able to create acompact package design which allows for miniature camera design. We are pleased with our long term relationship with Gpixel and with the way our technology combined with their excellent products allow us to target and gain market share in the growing high resolution industrial markets.”

Researchers using powerful supercomputers have found a way to generate microwaves with inexpensive silicon, a breakthrough that could dramatically cut costs and improve devices such as sensors in self-driving vehicles.

“Until now, this was considered impossible,” said C.R. Selvakumar, an engineering professor at the University of Waterloo who proposed the concept several years ago.

High-frequency microwaves carry signals in a wide range of devices, including the radar units police use to catch speeders and collision-avoidance systems in cars.

The microwaves are typically generated by devices called Gunn diodes, which take advantage of the unique properties of expensive and toxic semiconductor materials such as gallium arsenide.

When voltage is applied to gallium arsenide and then increased, the electrical current running through it also increases – but only to a certain point. Beyond that point, the current decreases, an oddity known as the Gunn effect that results in the emission of microwaves.

Lead researcher Daryoush Shiri, a former Waterloo doctoral student who now works at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, used computational nanotechnology to show that the same effect could be achieved with silicon.

The second-most abundant substance on earth, silicon would be far easier to work with for manufacturing and costs about one-twentieth as much as gallium arsenide.

The new technology involves silicon nanowires so tiny it would take 100,000 of them bundled together to equal the thickness of a human hair.

Complex computer models showed that if silicon nanowires were stretched as voltage was applied to them, the Gunn effect, and therefore the emission of microwaves, could be induced.

“With the advent of new nano-fabrication methods, it is now easy to shape bulk silicon into nanowire forms and use it for this purpose,” said Shiri.

Selvakumar said the theoretical work is the first step in a development process that could lead to much cheaper, more flexible devices for the generation of microwaves.

The stretching mechanism could also act as a switch to turn the effect on and off, or vary the frequency of microwaves for a host of new applications that haven’t even been imagined yet.

“This is only the beginning,” said Selvakumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Now we will see where it goes, how it will ramify.”

The 64th annual IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting(IEDM), to be held at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square hotel December 1-5, 2018, has issued a Call for Papers seeking the world’s best original work in all areas of microelectronics research and development.

The paper submission deadline this year is Wednesday, August 1, 2018. Authors are asked to submit four-page camera-ready papers. Accepted papers will be published as-is in the proceedings. A limited number of late-news papers will be accepted. Authors are asked to submit late-news papers announcing only the most recent and noteworthy developments. The late-news submission deadline is September 10, 2018.

At IEDM each year, the world’s best scientists and engineers in the field of microelectronics gather to participate in a technical program consisting of more than 220 presentations, along with a variety of panels, special sessions, Short Courses, a supplier exhibit, IEEE/EDS award presentations and other events highlighting leading work in more areas of the field than any other conference.

This year, special emphasis is placed on the following topics:

  • Neuromorphic computing/AI
  • Quantum computing devices and links
  • Devices for RF, 5G, THz and mmWave
  • Advanced memory technologies
  • More-than-Moore devices and integrations
  • Technologies for advanced logic nodes
  • Non-charge-based devices and systems
  • Sensors and MEMS devices
  • Package-device level interactions
  • Electron device simulation and modeling
  • Advanced characterization, reliability and noise
  • Optoelectronics, displays and imaging systems

Overall, papers in the following areas of technology are encouraged:

  • Circuit and Device Interaction
  • Characterization, Reliability and Yield
  • Compound Semiconductor and High-Speed Devices
  • Memory Technology
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Nano Device Technology
  • Optoelectronics, Displays and Imagers
  • Power Devices
  • Process and Manufacturing Technology
  • Sensors, MEMS and BioMEMS

Further information

For more information, interested persons should visit the IEDM 2018 home page at www.ieee-iedm.org.

Pure quartz glass is highly transparent and resistant to thermal, physical, and chemical impacts. These are optimum prerequisites for use in optics, data technology or medical engineering. For efficient, high-quality machining, however, adequate processes are lacking. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a forming technology to structure quartz glass like a polymer. This innovation is reported in the journal Advanced Materials.

“It has always been a big challenge to combine highly pure quartz glass and its excellent properties with a simple structuring technology,” says Dr. Bastian E. Rapp, Head of the NeptunLab interdisciplinary research group of KIT’s Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT). Rapp and his team develop new processes for industrial glass processing. “Instead of heating glass up to 800 °C for forming or structuring parts of glass blocks by laser processing or etching, we start with the smallest glass particles,” says the mechanical engineer. The scientists mix glass particles of 40 nanometers in size with a liquid polymer, form the mix like a sponge cake, and harden it to a solid by heating or light exposure. The resulting solid consists of glass particles in a matrix at a ratio of 60 to 40 vol%. The polymers act like a bonding agent that retains the glass particles at the right locations and, hence, maintains the shape.

This “Glassomer” can be milled, turned, laser-machined or processed in CNC machines just like a conventional polymer. “The entire range of polymer forming technologies is now opened for glass,” Rapp emphasizes. For fabricating high-performance lenses that are used in smartphones among others, the scientists produce a Glassomer rod, from which the lenses are cut. For highly pure quartz glass, the polymers in the composite have to be removed. For doing so, the lenses are heated in a furnace at 500 to 600 °C and the polymer is burned fully to CO2. To close the resulting gaps in the material, the lenses are sintered at 1300 °C. During this process, the remaining glass particles are densified to pore-free glass.

This forming technology enables production of highly pure glass materials for any applications, for which only polymers have been suited so far. This opens up new opportunities for the glass processing industry as well as for the optical industry, microelectronics, biotechnology, and medical engineering. “Our process is suited for mass production. Production and use of quartz glass are much cheaper, more sustainable, and more energy-efficient than those of a special polymer,” Rapp explains.

This is the third innovation for the processing of quartz glass that has been developed by NeptunLab on the basis of a liquid glass-polymer mixture. In 2016, the scientists already succeeded in using this mixture for molding. In 2017, they applied the mixture for 3D printing and demonstrate its suitability for additive manufacture. Within the framework of the “NanomatFutur” competition for early-stage researchers, the team was funded with EUR 2.8 million by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2014 to 2018. A spinoff now plans to commercialize Glassomer.

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.

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.”

Graphene has many properties; it is e.g. an extremely good conductor. But it does not absorb light very well. To remedy this limiting aspect of what is an otherwise amazing material, physicists resort to embedding a sheet of graphene in a flat photonic crystal, which is excellent for controlling the flow of light. The combination endows graphene with substantially enhanced light-absorbing capabilities. In a new study published in EPJ B, Arezou Rashidi and Abdolrahman Namdar from the University of Tabriz, Iran demonstrate that, by altering the temperature in such a hybrid cavity structure, they can tune its capacity for optical absorption. They explain that it is the thermal expansion and thermo-optical effects which give the graphene these optical characteristics. Potential applications include light sensors, ultra-fast lasers, and systems capable of modulating incoming optical beams.

The authors study the light absorption of the material as a function of temperature, the chemical energy potential, the light polarisation and its incidence angles. To do so, they use a modelling method called the transfer matrix method. They find that for normal light incidence, there is enhanced absorption at room temperature, while the absorption peak is shifted toward the red as the temperature increases.

Absorption on the plane of incident angle and wavelength. Credit: Springer

Absorption on the plane of incident angle and wavelength. Credit: Springer

As light comes in at an angle, the authors show that the absorption peaks are sensitive to the incident angles as well as the polarisation state of the light. They also find that by increasing the incident angle, the peak wavelength is shifted toward the blue.

They conclude that the peak wavelength can be controlled by varying either the temperature or incident angle, as well as the chemical energy potential of graphene. This shows that there are a number of tunable features that could be exploited for the design of graphene-based nano-devices, such as temperature-sensitive absorbers and sensors.