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SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) today announced that its advanced semiconductor-based research and development efforts at its Albany NanoTech Complex have successfully received ISO 9001:2015 certification from TÜV SÜD AMERICA INC. for its effective quality management system. This certification acknowledges that SUNY Poly’s Center for Semiconductor Research (CSR) consistently provides products and services meeting the stringent and ever-improving requirements of the internationally recognized ISO 9001 designation, especially as it relates to excellent customer focus, strong top management, and a process-driven approach for the fabrication of test structures on 300mm semiconductor wafers, the platform upon which computer chips are made.

“By earning the ISO 9001:2015 certification, SUNY Poly’s technological and process management capabilities are further validated. It demonstrates the strength of SUNY’s research and development facility and capacity that renders SUNY a reliable, world-class partner for high-tech industry and contributes to New York State’s thriving innovation ecosystem,” said SUNY Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development Grace Wang.”

“This certification showcases not only what SUNY Poly’s advanced facilities and nano-focused know-how are capable of, it is also another indication of how our institution aims to constantly improve via the implementation of its quality management systems with an eye toward continual progress,” said SUNY Poly Interim President Dr. Bahgat Sammakia. “This is one more way in which our globally recognized partners and potential future partners will know that they can work with SUNY Poly on advanced projects with extreme confidence.”

There are more than one million companies and organizations in over 170 countries certified to ISO 9001, but it is relatively rare for a research and educational institution to obtain this certification, with SUNY Poly’s Albany NanoTech Complex sharing the high-level distinction with well-regarded facilities such as the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, for example.

SUNY Poly’s CSR is a 300mm silicon wafer fabrication facility which provides researchers and partners with an industry-compliant and state-of-the-art fully integrated research, development, and prototyping line where companies of all sizes, as well as universities, national laboratories, and other researchers are able to gain access to advanced tool sets. The ISO 9001:2015 quality management system certification will offer current and future research partners even greater assurance of SUNY Poly’s ability to consistently provide high quality products and services as SUNY Poly seeks continual improvement in this area.  In addition, it could help lead to the facilities being designated as a U.S. Department of Defense Trusted Foundry, allowing it to work with any other trusted foundry to develop next-generation semiconductor wafer technologies.

“This third-party certification and detailed audit process are a strong signal to SUNY Poly’s research partners that our facilities, our externally-focused production capacity, as well as our management of services related to the fabrication of test structures on 300mm wafers, follow the strictest, most reliable standards, and we look forward to refining and improving the processes we employ to continually increase SUNY Poly’s fabrication competencies,” said SUNY Poly VP for Research Dr. Michael Liehr.

SUNY Poly’s ISO 9001:2015 certification is also significant because it opens the doors to the potential to work with certain commercial organizations that require the use of the formal quality management system. While the certification primarily concerns SUNY Poly CSR’s test structures program, which uses advanced CMOS processing for commercial customers, research leaders anticipate expanding its scope to also cover highly advanced silicon carbide (SiC) power electronics-centered research capabilities and processes, as well as photonics efforts, such as those related to the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics), an industry-driven public-private partnership spearheaded by the Department of Defense, SUNY Poly, and New York State with numerous top universities from around the nation and high-tech industry partners. SUNY Poly plans to seek annual recertification.

Enabling further advancements in metrology, HEIDENHAIN CORPORATION recently donated some equipment to UNC Charlotte’s Center for Precision Metrology (CPM), a world premier university metrology lab.

As part of the UNC Charlotte William States Lee College of Engineering, the Metrology Lab is central to the education and research efforts in the areas of precision engineering and metrology, and includes a wide variety of high-end measurement instruments. Providing measurement research support to the University community and local industry, and already equipped with a HEIDENHAIN KGM grid plate, the HEIDENHAIN donation of a new EIB interface box with cabling and ACCOM software is allowing important upgrades to be realized to the system.

“At UNC Charlotte, the HEIDENHAIN KGM grid encoder is used to demonstrate the measurement of dynamic machine tool errors to the graduate class in Machine Tool Metrology utilizing the ISO230 standard series,” explained CPM Chief Engineer Dr. Jimmie Miller. “As far as R&D with this equipment, other plans involve its utilization by directly connecting to research machine encoders to assess the machine multi-axis position and control. This will enable us to move the assessment metrology loop outside of the control loop for a faster non-interfering independent evaluation.

“The generous support of companies like HEIDENHAIN supporting education and R&D allows us to continue to maintain the CPM capabilities at the state-of-the-art level by utilizing today’s top technologies such as the donated HEIDENHAIN interface equipment and software,” stated Dr. Miller.

Interface electronics from HEIDENHAIN adapt the encoder signals to the interface of the subsequent electronics. They are used when the subsequent electronics cannot directly process the output signals from HEIDENHAIN encoders, or if additional interpolation of the signals is necessary.  Because of their high IP 65 degree of protection, interface electronics with a box design are well suited for a rough industrial environment, for example where machine tools operate. The inputs and outputs are equipped with robust M23 and M12 connecting elements. The stable cast-metal housing offers protection against physical damage as well as against electrical interference.

 

Solar cells have great potential as a source of clean electrical energy, but so far they have not been cheap, light, and flexible enough for widespread use. Now a team of researchers led by Tandon Associate Professor André D. Taylor of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department has found an innovative and promising way to improve solar cells and make their use in many applications more likely.

Most organic solar cells use fullerenes, spherical molecules of carbon. The problem, explains Taylor, is that fullerenes are expensive and don’t absorb enough light. Over the last 10 years he has made significant progress in improving organic solar cells, and he has recently focused on using non-fullerenes, which until now have been inefficient. However, he says, “the non-fullerenes are improving enough to give fullerenes a run for their money.”

Think of a solar cell as a sandwich, Taylor says. The “meat” or active layer – made of electron donors and acceptors – is in the middle, absorbing sunlight and transforming it into electricity (electrons and holes), while the “bread,” or outside layers, consist of electrodes that transport that electricity. His team’s goal was to have the cell absorb light across as large a spectrum as possible using a variety of materials, yet at the same time allow these materials to work together well. “My group works on key parts of the ‘sandwich,’ such as the electron and hole transporting layers of the ‘bread,’ while other groups may work only on the ‘meat’ or interlayer materials. The question is: How do you get them to play together? The right blend of these disparate materials is extremely difficult to achieve.”

Using a squaraine molecule in a new way – as a crystallizing agent – did the trick. “We added a small molecule that functions as an electron donor by itself and enhances the absorption of the active layer,” Taylor explains. “By adding this small molecule, it facilitates the orientation of the donor-acceptor polymer (called PBDB-T) with the non-fullerene acceptor, ITIC, in a favorable arrangement.”

This solar architecture also uses another design mechanism that the Taylor group pioneered known as a FRET-based solar cell. FRET, or Förster resonance energy transfer, is an energy transfer mechanism first observed in photosynthesis, by which plants use sunlight. Using a new polymer and non-fullerene blend with squaraine, the team converted more than 10 percent of solar energy into power. Just a few years ago this was considered too lofty a goal for single-junction polymer solar cells. “There are now newer polymer non-fullerene systems that can perform above 13 percent, so we view our contribution as a viable strategy for improving these systems,” Taylor says.

The organic solar cells developed by his team are flexible and could one day be used in applications supporting electric vehicles, wearable electronics, or backpacks to charge cell phones. Eventually, they could contribute significantly to the supply of electric power. “We expect that this crystallizing-agent method will attract attention from chemists and materials scientists affiliated with organic electronics,” says Yifan Zheng, Taylor’s former research student and lead author of the article about the work in the journal Materials Today.

Next for the research team? They are working on a type of solar cell called a perovskite as well as continuing to improve non-fullerene organic solar cells.

Researchers first developed a three-dimensional dynamic model of an interaction between light and nanoparticles. They used a supercomputer with graphic accelerators for calculations. Results showed that silicon particles exposed to short intense laser pulses lose their symmetry temporarily. Their optical properties become strongly heterogeneous. Such a change in properties depends on particle size, therefore it can be used for light control in ultrafast information processing nanoscale devices. The study is published in Advanced Optical Materials.

Improvement of computing devices today requires further acceleration of information processing. Nanophotonics is one of the disciplines that can solve this problem by means of optical devices. Although optical signals can be transmitted and processed much faster than electronic ones, first, it is necessary to learn how to quickly control light on a small scale. For this purpose, one could use metal particles. They localize light efficiently, yet weaken the signal eventually causing significant losses. However, dielectric and semiconducting materials, such as silicon, can be used instead of metal.

Silicon nanoparticles are now actively studied by researchers all around the world, including ITMO University. The long-term goal of such studies is to create an ultrafast compact modulators for optical signal. They can serve as a basis for computers of the future. However, this technology will become feasible only once we understand how nanoparticles interact with light.

“When a laser pulse hits the particle, a lot of free electrons are formed inside,” explains Sergey Makarov, head of the Laboratory of Hybrid Nanophotonics and Optoelectronics of ITMO University. “As a result a region saturated with oppositely charged particles is created. It is usually called an electron-hole plasma. Plasma changes optical properties of particles and up to now everybody believed that it happens with the whole particle simultaneously, so that the symmetry is preserved. We showed that this is not entirely true and an even distribution of the plasma inside particles is not the only possible scenario.”

Scientists found that an electromagnetic disturbance caused by interaction between light and particles has a more complex structure. This leads to a light distortion, varying with time. Therefore, the symmetry of particles breaks and optical properties become different throughout one particle. “Using analytical and numerical methods we first looked inside the particle and saw that processes taking place there are far more complicated than we thought,” says Konstantin Ladutenko, a member of the International Research Center of Nanophotonics and Metamaterials of ITMO University. “Moreover, we found that by changing the particle size, we can affect its interaction with the light signal. So, we might be able to predict the signal path in a entire system of nanoparticles.”

In order to create a tool to study processes inside nanoparticles, scientists from ITMO University joined forces with colleagues from Jean Monnet University in France. “We proposed analytical methods to determine particle size and refractive index, which might provide a change in optical properties. Afterwards, with powerful computational methods we tracked processes inside particles. Our colleagues did calculations on a computer with graphics accelerators. Such computers are often used for cryptocurrency mining. However, we decided to enrich humanity with new knowledge, rather than enrich ourselves. What is more, bitcoin rate just started to fall then,” adds Konstantin.

Devices based on such nanoparticles may become basic elements of optical computers, just as transistors now are basic elements of electronics. They will make it possible to distribute and redirect or branch the signal. “Such asymmetric structures have a variety of applications yet we focus on ultra-fast signal processing,” continues Sergey. “Now we have a powerful theoretical tool which will help us to develop a quick and compact light management system.”

 

University of Groningen physicists have managed to alter the flow of spin waves through a magnet, using only an electrical current. This is a huge step towards the spin transistor that is needed to construct spintronic devices. These promise to be much more energy efficient than conventional electronics. The results were published on 2 March in Physical Review Letters.

Spin is a quantum mechanical property of electrons. Simply put, it makes electrons behave like small magnetic compass needles which can point up or down. This can be used to transfer or store information, creating spintronic devices that promise several advantages over normal microelectronics.

In a conventional computer, separate devices are needed for data storage (often using a magnetic process) and data processing (electronic transistors). Spintronics could integrate both in one device, so it would no longer be necessary to move information between storage and processing units. Furthermore, spins can be stored in a non-volatile way, which means that their storage requires no energy, in contrast to normal RAM memory. All this means that spintronics could potentially make faster and more energy-efficient computers.

Wave

To realize this, many steps have to be taken and a lot of fundamental knowledge has to be obtained. The Physics of Nano Devices group of physics professor Bart van Wees at the University of Groningen’s Zernike Institute of Advanced Materials is at the forefront of this field. In their latest paper, they present a spin transistor based on magnons. Magnons, or spin waves, are a type of wave that only occurs in magnetic materials. ‘You can view magnons as a wave, or a particle, like electrons’, explains Ludo Cornelissen, PhD student in the Van Wees group and first author of the paper.

In their experiments, Cornelissen and Van Wees generate magnons in materials that are magnetic, but also electrically insulating. Electrons can’t travel through the magnet, but the spin waves can – just like a wave in a stadium moves while the spectators all stay in place. Cornelissen used a strip of platinum to inject magnons into a magnet made of yttrium iron garnet (YIG). ‘When an electron current travels through the strip, electrons are scattered by the interaction with the heavy atoms, a process that is called the spin Hall effect. The scattering depends on the spin of these electrons, so electrons with spin up and spin down are separated.’

Spin flip

At the interface of platinum and YIG, the electrons bounce back as they can’t enter the magnet. ‘When this happens, their spin flips from up to down, or vice versa. However, this causes a parallel spin flip inside the YIG, which creates a magnon.’ The magnons travel through the material and can be detected with a second platinum strip.

‘We described this spin transport through a magnet some time ago. Now, we’ve taken the next step: we wanted to influence the transport.’ This was done using a third platinum strip between injector and detector. By applying a positive or negative current, it is possible to either inject additional magnons in the conduction channel or drain magnons from it. ‘That makes our set up analogous to a field effect transistor. In such a transistor, an electric field of a gate electrode reduces or increases the number of free electrons in the channel, thus shutting down or boosting the current.’

Cornelissen and his colleagues show that adding magnons increases the spin current, while draining them causes a significant reduction. ‘Although we were not yet able to switch off the magnon current completely, this device does act as a transistor’, says Cornelissen. Theoretical modelling shows that reducing the thickness of the device can increase the depletion of magnons enough to stop the magnon current completely.

Superconductivity

But there is another interesting option, explains Cornelissen’s supervisor Bart van Wees: ‘In a thinner device, it could be possible to increase the amount of magnons in the channel to a level where they would form a Bose-Einstein condensate.’ This is the phenomenon that is responsible for superconductivity. And it occurs at room temperature, contrary to normal superconductivity, which only occurs at very low temperatures.

The study shows that a YIG spin transistor can be made, and that in the long run this material could even produce a spin superconductor. The beauty of the system is that spin injection and control of spin currents is achieved with a simple DC current, making these spintronic devices compatible with normal electronics. ‘Our next step is to see if we can realize this promise’, concludes Van Wees.

Researchers have, for the first time, integrated two technologies widely used in applications such as optical communications, bio-imaging and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems that scan the surroundings of self-driving cars and trucks.

In the collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Harvard University, researchers successfully crafted a metasurface-based lens atop a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) platform. The result is a new infrared light-focusing system that combines the best features of both technologies while reducing the size of the optical system.

This image gives a close-up view of a metasurface-based flat lens (square piece) integrated onto a MEMS scanner. Integration of MEMS devices with metalenses will help manipulate light in sensors by combining the strengths of high-speed dynamic control and precise spatial manipulation of wave fronts.This image was taken with an optical microscope at Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials. Credit: Argonne National Laboratory

This image gives a close-up view of a metasurface-based flat lens (square piece) integrated onto a MEMS scanner. Integration of MEMS devices with metalenses will help manipulate light in sensors by combining the strengths of high-speed dynamic control and precise spatial manipulation of wave fronts.This image was taken with an optical microscope at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials. Credit: Argonne National Laboratory

Metasurfaces can be structured at the nanoscale to work like lenses. These metalenses were pioneered by Federico Capasso, Harvard’s Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics, and his group at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The lenses are rapidly finding applications because they are much thinner and less bulky than existing lenses, and can be made with the same technology used to fabricate computer chips. The MEMSs, meanwhile, are small mechanical devices that consist of tiny, movable mirrors.

“These devices are key today for many technologies. They have become technologically pervasive and have been adopted for everything from activating automobile air bags to the global positioning systems of smart phones,” said Daniel Lopez, Nanofabrication and Devices Group Leader at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

Lopez, Capasso and four co-authors describe how they fabricated and tested their new device in an article in APL Photonics, titled “Dynamic metasurface lens based on MEMS technology.” The device measures 900 microns in diameter and 10 microns in thickness (a human hair is approximately 50 microns thick).

The collaboration’s ongoing work to further develop novel applications for the two technologies is conducted at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials, SEAS and the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems, which is part of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure.

In the technologically merged optical system, MEMS mirrors reflect scanned light, which the metalens then focuses without the need for an additional optical component such as a focusing lens. The challenge that the Argonne/Harvard team overcame was to integrate the two technologies without hurting their performance.

The eventual goal would be to fabricate all components of an optical system — the MEMS, the light source and the metasurface-based optics — with the same technology used to manufacture electronics today.

“Then, in principle, optical systems could be made as thin as credit cards,” Lopez said.

These lens-on-MEMS devices could advance the LIDAR systems used to guide self-driving cars. Current LIDAR systems, which scan for obstacles in their immediate proximity, are, by contrast, several feet in diameter.

“You need specific, big, bulky lenses, and you need mechanical objects to move them around, which is slow and expensive,” said Lopez.

“This first successful integration of metalenses and MEMS, made possible by their highly compatible technologies, will bring high speed and agility to optical systems, as well unprecedented functionalities,” said Capasso.

A new progress in the scaling of semiconductor quantum dot based qubit has been achieved at Key Laboratory of Quantum Information and Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information & Quantum Physics of USTC. Professor GUO Guoping with his co-workers, XIAO Ming, LI Haiou and CAO Gang, designed and fabricated a quantum processor with six quantum dots, and experimentally demonstrated quantum control of the Toffoli gate. This is the first time for the realization of the Toffoli gate in the semiconductor quantum dot system, which motivates further research on larger scale semiconductor quantum processor. The result was published as ‘Controlled Quantum Operations of a Semiconductor Three-Qubit System ‘ (Physical Review Applied 9, 024015 (2018)).

This is the Toffoli Gate in a three-qubit system. Credit: University of Science and Technology of China

This is the Toffoli Gate in a three-qubit system. Credit: University of Science and Technology of China

Developing the scalable semiconductor quantum chip that is compatible with modern semiconductor-techniques is an important research area. In this area, the fabrication, manipulation and scaling of semiconductor quantum dot based qubits are the most important core technologies. Professor GUO Guoping’s group aims to master these technologies and has been devoted to this area for a long time. Before the demonstration of the three-qubit gate, they have realized ultrafast universal control of the charge qubit based on semiconductor quantum dots in 2013(Nature Communications. 4:1401 (2013)), and achieved the controlled rotation of two charge qubits in 2015(Nature Communications. 6:7681 (2015)).

The Toffoli gate is a three-qubit operation that changed the state of a target qubit conditioned on the state of two control qubits. It can be used for universal reversible classical computation and also forms a universal set of qubit gates in quantum computation together with a Hadamard gate. Furthermore, it is a key element in quantum error correction schemes. Implementation of the Toffoli gate with only single- and two-qubit operations requires six controlled-NOT gates and ten single-qubit operations.

As a result, a single-step Toffoli gate can reduce the number of quantum operations dramatically, which can break the limit of coherence time and improve the efficiency of quantum computing. Researchers from Guo’s group found the T-shaped six quantum dot architecture with openings between control qubits and the target qubit can strengthen the coupling between qubits with different function and minimize it between qubits with the same function, which satisfies the requirements of the Toffoli gate well. Using this architecture with optimized high frequency pulses, researchers demonstrated the Toffoli gate in semiconductor quantum dot system in the world for the first time, which paves the way and lays a solid foundation for the scalable semiconductor quantum processor.

The reviewer spoke highly of this work, and thought this is an important progress in the field of semiconductor quantum dot based quantum computing.”The work is detailed and clearly demonstrates a high level of experimental technique and would be of high interest to people working in the field of electrostatically defined quantum dots for quantum computation”.

 

The research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, imec, and Cadence Design Systems, Inc. today announced that its extensive, long-standing collaboration has resulted in the industry’s first 3nm test chip tapeout. The tapeout project, geared toward advancing 3nm chip design, was completed using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and 193 immersion (193i) lithography-oriented design rules and the Cadence Innovus Implementation System and Genus Synthesis Solution. Imec utilized a common industry 64-bit CPU for the test chip with a custom 3nm standard cell library and a TRIM metal flow, where the routing pitch was reduced to 21nm. Together, Cadence and imec have enabled the 3nm implementation flow to be fully validated in preparation for next-generation design innovation.

The Cadence Innovus Implementation System is a massively parallel physical implementation system that enables engineers to deliver high-quality designs with optimal power, performance and area (PPA) targets while accelerating time to market. The Cadence Genus Synthesis Solution is a next-generation, high-capacity RTL synthesis and physical synthesis engine that addresses the latest FinFET process node requirements, improving RTL designer productivity by up to 10X. For more information on the Innovus Implementation System, please visit www.cadence.com/go/innovus3nm, and to learn about the Genus Synthesis Solution, visit www.cadence.com/go/genus3nm.

For the project, EUV and 193i lithography rules were tested to provide the required resolution, while providing PPA comparison under two different patterning assumptions. For more information on EUV technology and 193i technology, visit https://www.imec-int.com/en/articles/imec-presents-patterning-solutions-for-n5-equivalent-metal-layers.

Post place and route layout of 21 nm pitch metal layers

Post place and route layout of 21 nm pitch metal layers

“As process dimensions reduce to the 3nm node, interconnect variation becomes much more significant,” said An Steegen, executive vice president for semiconductor technology and systems at imec. “Our work on the test chip has enabled interconnect variation to be measured and improved and the 3nm manufacturing process to be validated. Also, the Cadence digital solutions offered everything needed for this 3nm implementation. Due to Cadence’s well-integrated flow, the solutions were easy to use, which helped our engineering team stay productive when developing the 3nm rule set.”

“Imec’s state-of-the-art infrastructure enables pre-production innovations ahead of industry demands, making them a critical partner for us in the EDA industry,” said Dr. Chin-Chi Teng, corporate vice president and general manager in the Digital & Signoff Group at Cadence. “Expanding upon the work we did with imec in 2015 on the industry’s first 5nm tapeout, we are achieving new milestones together with this new 3nm tapeout, which can transform the future of mobile designs at advanced nodes.”

Researchers have developed an imaging technique that uses a tiny, super sharp needle to nudge a single nanoparticle into different orientations and capture 2-D images to help reconstruct a 3-D picture. The method demonstrates imaging of individual nanoparticles at different orientations while in a laser-induced excited state.

The findings, published in The Journal of Chemical Physics, brought together researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of Washington, Seattle in a collaborative project through the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I.

Nanostructures like microchip semiconductors, carbon nanotubes and large protein molecules contain defects that form during synthesis that cause them to differ in composition from one another. However, these defects are not always a bad thing, said Martin Gruebele, the lead author and an Illinois chemistry professor and chair.

“The term ‘defect’ is a bit of a misnomer,” Gruebele said. “For example, semiconductors are manufactured with intentional defects that form the ‘holes’ that electrons jump into to produce electrical conductivity. Having the ability to image those defects could let us better characterize them and control their production.”

As advances in technology allow for smaller and smaller nanoparticles, it is critical for engineers to know the precise number and location of these defects to assure quality and functionality.

The study focused on a class of nanoparticles called quantum dots. These dots are tiny, near-spherical semiconductors used in technology like solar panels, live cell imaging and molecular electronics – the basis for quantum computing.

The team observed the quantum dots using a single-molecule absorption scanning tunneling microscope fitted with a needle sharpened to a thickness of only one atom at its tip. The needle nudges the individual particles around on a surface and scans them to get a view of the quantum dot from different orientations to produce a 3-D image.

The researchers said there are two distinct advantages of the new SMA-STM method when compared with the current technology – the Nobel Prize-winning technique called cryogenic electron tomography.

For a video related to this research can be found here.

“Instead of an image produced using an average of thousands of different particles, as is done with CryoET, SMA-STM can produce an image from a single particle in about 20 different orientations,” Gruebele said. “And because we are not required to chill the particles to near-absolute zero temperatures, we can capture the particles at room temperature, not frozen and motionless.”

The researchers looked at semiconductor quantum dots for this study, but SMA-STM can also be used to explore other nanostructures such as carbon nanotubes, metal nanoparticles or synthetic macromolecules. The group believes the technique can be refined for use with soft materials like protein molecules, Gruebele said.

The researchers are working to advance SMA-STM into a single-particle tomography technique, meaning that they will need to prove that method is noninvasive.

“For SMA-STM to become a true single-particle tomography technique, we will need to prove that our nudges do not damage or score the nanoparticle in any way while rolled around,” Gruebele said. “Knocking off just one atom can fundamentally alter the defect structure of the nanoparticle.”

GLOBALFOUNDRIES and eVaderis today announced that they are co-developing an ultra-low power microcontroller (MCU) reference design using GF’s embedded magnetoresistive non-volatile memory (eMRAM) technology on the 22nm FD-SOI (22FDX®) platform. By bringing together the superior reliability and versatility of GF’s 22FDX eMRAM and eVaderis’ ultra-low power IP, the companies will deliver a technology solution that supports a broad set of applications such as battery-powered IoT products, consumer and industrial microcontrollers, and automotive controllers.

eVaderis designed their MCU to leverage the efficient power management capabilities of the 22FDX platform, achieving more than 10 times the battery life and a significantly reduced die size compared to previous generation MCUs. The technology, developed through GF’s FDXcelerator Partner Program, will help designers push performance density and flexibility to new levels to achieve a more compact, cost-effective single-chip solution for power-sensitive applications.

“The innovative architecture of eVaderis’ ultra-low power MCU IP, designed around GF’s 22FDX eMRAM technology, is well suited for normally-off IoT applications,” said Jean-Pascal Bost, President and CEO of eVaderis. “Utilizing GF’s eMRAM as a working memory allows sections of the eVaderis MCU to power cycle frequently, without incurring the typical MCU performance penalty. eVaderis looks forward to making this silicon-proven IP available to our customers by the end of this year.”

“Wearable and IoT devices require long-lasting battery life, increased processing capability, and the integration of advanced sensors,” said Dave Eggleston, VP of Embedded Memory at GF. “As an FDXcelerator partner, eVaderis is developing an optimized MCU architecture in GF’s 22FDX with eMRAM that helps customers meet demanding requirements.”

The jointly developed reference design with GF’s 22FDX with eMRAM will be available in Q4 2018. Process design kits for 22FDX with eMRAM and RF solutions are available now. Customer prototyping of 22FDX eMRAM on multi-project wafers (MPWs) is underway, with risk production planned for 2018. Off-the-shelf eMRAM macros are available now, featuring easy design-in with both eFlash and SRAM interface options.

Customers that are interested in learning more about GF’s 22FDX with eMRAM solution, co-developed in partnership with Everspin Technologies, contact your sales representative or visit globalfoundries.com.