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(July 28, 2010) — Disposable razor blades could become a thing of the past if scientists at GFD have their way. The German high-tech company has developed a super-sharp razor blade made of industrial diamonds that could last more than 1,000 times longer than today’s conventional blade. Because GFD only produces the razor blade but not the finished razor, the company is currently exploring possible strategic alliances to develop this product for the consumer market.

Click to EnlargeThe technological breakthrough achieved by GFD employs two specialized processes: the nanocrystalline diamond coating of a carbide blade followed by the plasma sharpening of the blade. To manufacture such a razor blade, a nanocrystalline diamond coating is first applied to a carbide blade, then the minute, jewelled layers are polished by an innovative plasma sharpening process developed by the GFD researchers. The blade is polished until the cutting edge is sharpened to only a few nanometers, therefore consisting of merely a few atoms. This process manages, for the first time, to combine the hardest material in the world with the sharpest possible cutting edge. Read more about nano production equipment here: http://www.electroiq.com/index/nanotech-mems/tools-equipment.html

"This simple-sounding procedure is the result of years of research and development," explains André Flöter, doctor of physics and the managing director of Ulm-based GFD, short for Gesellschaft für Diamantprodukte mbH. In spite of the diamond’s extreme hardness, they have in the past played a subordinate role as a manufacturing material. Reasons include the rarity of diamonds’ natural occurrence in the world and until recently, the high cost of manufacturing diamonds artificially. It was not until the early 1980s that researchers began using a new procedure to manufacture diamonds artificially as a thin layer and at a reasonable price. GFD is one of the first companies in the world to master the industrial plasma sharpening of diamond coatings on a scale relevant to production.

In cooperation with Professor Hans-Jörg Fecht, a renowned expert on nanomaterials from the University of Ulm, and with the aid of public research funding, GFD has for many years been developing products in the area of cutting technology based on artificially manufactured nanocrystalline diamond coatings, which can be used in industrial manufacturing. Industrial diamond razor blades demonstrate a product life of up to 1,000 times longer than steel blades. The diamond material ensures that the blade remains ultrasharp.

Flöter and his colleagues now plan to industrialize this new technology with the addition of business partners who specialize in wet shaving. "Potential partners should be well versed in marketing in the middle to upper price segment," Flöter says. "Initial talks are underway. Thankfully one does not have to be a millionaire to be able to enjoy the new razor. If one adds together the costs of disposable razors over the period of one year, then our diamond blade could certainly be a reasonably priced alternative."

GFD develops and produces diamond-based products and belongs to the leading suppliers of diamond blades worldwide.

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See more research initiatives in our R&D center: http://www.electroiq.com/index/nanotech-mems/research-development.html

(July 27, 2010) — Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. released two DXR Nanocarbon Analysis Packages for the characterization and microcharacterization of carbon nanomaterials. Both packages offer large-scale chemical and materials producers complete systems for carbon nanotube analysis. Incorporating the Thermo Scientific DXR Raman platform, the packages provide information on the molecular structure and morphology of carbon nanomaterials.

Click to EnlargeDesigned to simplify the Raman technique for non-specialist instrument users, the packages are said to enhance productivity and provide accurate, rapid and reproducible results. Thermo Fisher packages contain hardware, software and sampling accessories. The DXR Nanocarbon Microanalysis Package, featuring the DXR Raman Microscope, is a complete system configured for microcharacterization. The DXR Nanocarbon Analysis Package, which leverages the Thermo Scientific SmartRaman, is a full system for bulk materials characterization.

The new packages are designed to produce accurate and reproducible results by incorporating rigorous automated calibration and alignment routines, control of laser power and sophisticated quality checks to every spectrum collected. High reproducibility and control of critical measurement parameters provides confidence in results so that analysts know that unexpected occurrences are due to the sample rather than user error. In addition, the packages are designed to guide users through data collection as quickly as possible, allowing more time to focus on results and enhance productivity. The system also includes intelligent software to optimize many measurement parameters, as well as hardware designed so that users can simply load a sample and then return later. Experiments that may take hours to set up on other instruments can often be completed in just minutes.

The packages have an advanced targeting mechanism, offering the spatial resolution and sensitivity needed to handle the weak signals often generated by carbon nanomaterials. The analysis packages are also highly flexible and can be customized to accommodate a wide variety of applications and sample forms covering important areas of carbon nanomaterials such as fundamental research, nanomaterial production, functionalization, applied research on end-applications and end-application production.

Carbon nanomaterials offer a range of useful properties, including electrical conductance, thermal resistance and exceptional strength. They have applications ranging from nanotechnology and electronics to optics. Raman spectroscopy characterizes carbon nanomaterials during processing and modifications.

For more information about the Thermo Scientific DXR Nanocarbon Analysis and Microanalysis Packages, visit www.thermoscientific.com/raman.

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(July 27, 2010) — Stanford University placed an order for two Plasma-Therm deposition systems: a VERSALINE HDPCVD system and a Shuttlelock PECVD system. The tools will be installed at Stanford’s Nanofabrication Facility.

Click to EnlargePlasma-Therm’s VERSALINE HDPCVD system, with its high density ICP plasma and temperature-controlled environment, expands research capabilities by providing critical Click to Enlargetechnology to deposit high quality dielectric films at low temperatures. The Shuttlelock PECVD system uses a more traditional configuration of parallel plate electrodes that contributes fundamental and important deposition processes such as controllable low-stress silicon nitride. Together, the systems will be used to assist in the Nanofabrication Facility’s research efforts in areas such as nanoelectronic devices, MEMS/NEMS and photonics.

“Stanford University has long since established itself as a leading R&D facility. The deposition processes from industry proven systems like VERSALINE and Shuttlelock will give researchers at the Nanofabrication Facility the tools necessary to make advances in nanoscience applications,” stated Ed Ostan, Plasma-Therm’s EVP of sales & marketing. “Plasma-Therm’s worldwide presence at nanofabrication facilities with processing equipment that spans decades is a reflection of equipment durability, reliability and technological relevance. Our continuous involvement and collaboration with these advanced laboratories is what stimulates process and equipment development.”

The Stanford Nanofabrication Facility (SNF) serves academic, industrial and governmental researchers across the U.S. in areas ranging from optics, MEMS, biology, and chemistry, to traditional electronics device fabrication and process characterization. The SNF is a 10,000 sq.ft. class 100 cleanroom facility that provides researchers with effective and efficient access to advanced nanofabrication equipment and expertise. The SNF is one of 14 universities that make up the NSF’s National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN). NNIN is committed to providing nanofabrication resources to researchers across the country in both industry and academia. Read more about Stanford’s recent electronics manufacturing research in IME, Stanford partner on Si nanowire-based circuits, IITC Day 1: 3D/TSV, Cu barrier films, critical collaboration, IITC Day 0: Short course reflects interconnects’ maturity, MRS Day 5: Flexible electronics, Ge-Si integration, CNTs, OPV…, IEDM 2009: Stanford’s CNT transistors, Carbon nanotubes turn paper/ink into batteries

Plasma-Therm supplies advanced plasma process equipment for etch and deposition technologies. For more information, visit www.PlasmaTherm.com

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by James Montgomery, news editor

July 26, 2010 – The "Extreme Electronics" stage in the back corner of Moscone’s South Hall was packed all week long, offering discussions and presentations ranging from MEMS (see Pete’s writeup) to sensors to energy harvesting to flexible electronics. The talks we stood in on (no easy-access seats were available) were worth it.

MEMS had a big presence, both among exhibitors and the aforementioned presentation stage. Yole Développement sees a $6.5B MEMS device market in 2009 swelling to >$16B by 2015, and an even bigger surge in units: 3.2B in 2009, and 10B in 2015. iSuppli sees MEMS growing 11% this year to $6.B and expanding to $9.8B by 2014, a 10.7% CAGR; units will rise from 3.44B in 2009 to 4.14B in 2010, and 8.5B units by 2014 (a 19.5% CAGR). MEMS demand is so hot that even companies with internal MEMS fabs (e.g. Delphi, Conti) are exploring foundry sources, noted Yole’s Jean Christophe Eloy.

Better manufacturing technology for MEMS is pushing prices down, Eloy said. In 2000, accelerometers were 10mm2 in size, consumed 0.1mW, cost >$3.00, and were manufactured on 4-6in wafers. In 2010, devices are ~2-3mm2, made on 6-8in. wafers, consume 0.05mW, and cost $0.70. By 2020, MEMS devices will measure 1-2mm2, consume <0.05mW, cost <$0.4, and be manufactured mostly on 8-in. wafers (and will utilize 3D integration). "MEMS production is back on the fast track," said Jérémie Bouchaud, director and principal analyst for MEMS and sensors at iSuppli."

More "lessons learned" from SEMICON West 2010:
Lesson #1: Good times here, for now
Lesson #2: Capital intensity & EUV
Lesson #3: 3D and packaging are hot
Lesson #4: Supply chain challenges

Also fueling growth in MEMS is applications for consumer electronic devices and mobile handsets, which "bulldozed their way through the economic crisis," Bouchaud said. Inkjet printers will stay the dominant-selling MEMS device through 2014, ending the period with $2B/year.

High-brightness LEDs held the "Extreme Electronics" stage for every slot on Wednesday, reflecting that sector’s growing interest from semiconductor firms and suppliers seeking yet another new high-growth business. (HB-LED processing is something that suppliers will need to better understand, pointed out one industry watcher. E.g. wafers can sit up to half a day in a chamber vs. typical tool-to-tool flows for semiconductor manufacturing. And sapphire wafers are about to get much bigger — think 300mm.)

And of course everything Intersolar was right next door in the West Hall (exhibits) and Intercontinental (sessions), where traffic was even heavier (it barely thinned out as you went to the top of the three exhibit floors.) One question we heard, though, somewhat rhetorically: What happens if (when?) the solar side gets any bigger? How many solar panel demos can you fit in one expo center? We’ve heard Intersolar and SEMI remain committed to having a colocated show, so the question will be how to give Intersolar enough room to flex its muscles.

Semiconductors are everywhere

Bernie Meyerson’s Tuesday keynote identified high-level real-world applications where enabling technologies can make a fundamental difference in people’s lives, from managing urban traffic to pre-diagnosing sudden onset of diseases. At a SST-hosted breakfast on Wednesday (July 14), Andrew Thompson of Proteus Biomedical, developer of "intelligent" pharmaceutical devices that can be swallowed to monitor and relay body functions, preached for the marriage of information and technology and medicine. Among the planet’s 6-7B humans, there are roughly 5B cell phones in use — while only 3B people have shoes, he said. And the Internet reaches more people than water or electricity — it’s the world’s most important utility. (His grandmother witnessed the invention of everything from flight to refrigerators to TVs, he said, so surely we can come up with something.)

But it’s getting the message across to the masses (and influencers) outside our industry that’s the next big goal. We heard several times that the semiconductor industry (and tech in general) needs charismatic, intelligent advocacy to help Wall Street really understand the broad impact and potential of how what we do.

But eager ears are certainly out there — and maybe in surprising places. At our hotel this year, the concierge surprised us by revealing quite a bit more than a passing knowledge. Turns out he’s a U.Penn-pedigreed Ph.D — patented, with a handful of published papers — with a wide background in everything from narrow bandgap semiconductors to IR detectors and sensors to solar panels and nickel-hydride batteries. He’s still tracking what goes on in the industry, and has a keen interest to get back into the game after a hiatus. We’ve got his contact information if anyone’s interested.

(July 26, 2010) — Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have cultivated many thousands of nanocrystals in what looks like a pinscreen or "pin art" on silicon (Si), a step toward reliable mass production of semiconductor nanowires for millionths-of-a-meter-scale devices such as sensors and lasers.

Click to Enlarge
Figure. Colorized micrograph of semiconductor nanowires grown at NIST in a precisely controlled array of sizes and locations.

NIST researchers grow nanowires made of semiconductors — gallium nitride (GaN) alloys — by depositing atoms layer-by-layer on a silicon crystal under high vacuum. NIST has the unusual capability to produce these nanowires without using metal catalysts, thereby enhancing luminescence and reducing defects. NIST nanowires also have excellent mechanical quality factors.

The latest experiments, described in Advanced Functional Materials,* maintained the purity and defect-free crystal structure of NIST nanowires while controlling diameter and placement better than has been reported by other groups for catalyst-based nanowires. Precise control of diameter and placement is essential before nanowires can be widely used.

The key trick in the NIST technique is to grow the wires through precisely defined holes in a stencil-like mask covering the silicon wafer. The NIST nanowires were grown through openings in patterned silicon nitride masks. About 30,000 nanowires were grown per 76-millimeter-wide wafer. The technique controlled nanowire location almost perfectly. Wires grew uniformly through most openings and were absent on most of the mask surface.

Mask openings ranged from 300 to 1000 nm wide, in increments of 100 nm. In each opening of 300 nm or 400 nm, a single nanowire grew, with a well-formed hexagonal shape and a symmetrical tip with six facets. Larger openings produced more variable results. Openings of 400 nm to 900 nm yielded single-crystal nanowires with multifaceted tops. Structures grown in 1,000-nm openings appeared to be multiple wires stuck together. All nanowires grew to about 1,000 nm tall over three days.

NIST researchers analyzed micrographs to verify the uniformity of nanowire shape and size statistically. The analysis revealed nearly uniform areas of wires of the same diameter as well as nearly perfect hexagonal shapes.

Growing nanowires on silicon is one approach NIST researchers are exploring for making "nanowires on a chip" devices. Although the growth temperatures are too high—over 800 degrees Celsius—for silicon circuitry to tolerate, there may be ways to grow the nanowires first and then protect them during circuitry fabrication, lead author Kris Bertness says. The research was partially supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Center on NanoscaleScience and Technology for Integrated Micro/Nano-Electromechanical Transducers (iMINT) at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

* K. A. Bertness, A. W. Sanders, D. M. Rourke, T. E. Harvey, A. Roshko, J.B. Schlager and N. A. Sanford. Controlled nucleation of GaN nanowires grown with molecular beam epitaxy. Advanced Functional Materials. Published online: July 13, 2010. DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201000381

 

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by Neha Choksi, contributing editor

July 23, 2010 – With the US reeling from record unemployment, many are wondering how the MEMS job market is fairing. Jason Weigold, founder and president of MEMStaff, shared his observations based on clients’ hiring and consulting needs. With 15 years of MEMS engineering experience and 4 years of MEMS staffing experience, Weigold is able to offer a unique perspective.Click to Enlarge

When MEMS industry was in its infancy, companies developing MEMS products hired top engineers from the traditional semiconductor industry because few experienced MEMS engineers existed. These employees leveraged their prior high-volume background coupled with general problem solving skills to address MEMS hurdles.

Since then, multiple companies have successfully commercialized MEMS devices. Examples include Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Bosch, Freescale, ST Microelectronics, and Knowles, who collectively have shipped over 4 billion MEMS devices. Weigold estimates that the experienced, directly MEMS-related talent pool currently employed at these companies alone is over 1500 people.

Now that multiple companies have successfully brought high-volume MEMS devices to market, MEMS employers can demand more specific MEMS experience. "Any good semiconductor engineer who encounters problems in MEMS can determine a root cause and find a solution," Weigold says. "However, there exist people today who have who have already encountered and worked through many MEMS problems, and can therefore foresee their occurrence, and take steps to prevent them from ever occurring. This is essential to companies encountering shrinking market windows with increased competition, and those trying to achieve milestones in a timely manner for continued investment."

According to Weigold, MEMS hiring has definitely increased compared to a year ago, with companies seeking talent with experience in a specific product — prior work with MEMS RF devices or gyroscopes, for example. Solid MEMS design experience & MEMS process integration skills have been in demand, especially those with DRIE and wafer bonding know-how. Those with test and packaging experience are also at an advantage. Employers are actively seeking those who have already seen a MEMS product successfully commercialized. A large number of strong MEMS engineers being hired are not US citizens, in part because the American pool to choose from is already taken. This raises questions as to why American talent is not pursuing careers in engineering. In addition, there appears to be a current surplus of middle management and fresh graduates in the MEMS field.

Weigold will be sharing additional insight and best practices on how to acquire MEMS talent at the 2010 Commercialization of Micro-Nano Systems (COMS) Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the end of August. From his perspective, "acquisition and retention of top employees is essential in a field seeing increased competition, more stringent specifications, lower selling prices, and tightening timelines."

Neha K. Choksi is an independent consultant based in Mountain View, CA. She has worked for a variety of MEMS companies including as director of product engineering at Silicon Microstructures and as a consultant focusing on commercialization and high-volume production of MEMS devices. E-mail: Choksi [at] gmail.

(July 23, 2010) — A new paper from the lab of Rice University chemist James Tour demonstrates an environmentally friendly way to make bulk quantities of graphene oxide (GO), an insulating version of single-atom-thick graphene expected to find use in all kinds of material and electronic applications.

A second paper from Tour and Andreas Lüttge, a Rice professor of Earth science and chemistry, shows how GO is broken down by common bacteria that leave behind only harmless, natural graphite.

The paper appears online this week in the journal ACS Nano.

"These are the pillars that make graphene oxide production practical," said Tour, Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. The GO manufacturing process was developed as part of a research project with M-I SWACO, a Houston-based producer of drilling fluids for the petrochemical industry that hopes to use graphene to improve the productivity of wells. 

View a webcast on Nanotechnology Safety from Small Times, on-demand at http://www.electroiq.com/index/webcasts/webcast-display/1960675815/webcasts/small-times/live-events/understanding-nanotechnology.html

Scientists have been making GO since the 19th century, but the new process eliminates a significant stumbling block to bulk production, Tour said. "People were using potassium chlorate or sodium nitrates that release toxic gases – one of which, chlorine dioxide, is explosive," he said. "Manufacturers are always reluctant to go to a large scale with any process that generates explosive intermediates."

Tour and his colleagues used a process similar to the one they employed to unzip multiwalled nanotubes into graphene nanoribbons, as described in a Nature paper last year. They process flakes of graphite (common pencil lead) with potassium permanganate, sulfuric acid and phosphoric acid, all common, inexpensive chemicals.

"Many companies have started to make graphene and graphene oxide, and I think they’re going to be very hard pressed to come up with a cheaper procedure that’s this efficient and as safe and environmentally friendly," Tour said.

The researchers suggested the water-soluble product could find use in polymers, ceramics and metals, as thin films for electronics, as drug-delivery devices and for hydrogen storage, as well as for oil and gas recovery. 

Though GO is a natural insulator, it could be chemically reduced to a conductor or semiconductor, though not without defects, Tour said.

With so many potential paths into the environment, the fate of GO nanomaterials concerned Tour, who sought the advice of Rice colleague Lüttge.

Lüttge and Everett Salas, a postdoctoral researcher in his lab and primary author of the second paper, had already been studying the effects of bacteria on carbon, so it was simple to shift their attention to GO. They found bacteria from the genus Shewanella easily convert GO to harmless graphene. The graphene then stacks itself into graphite.

"That’s a big plus for green nano, because these ubiquitous bacteria are quickly converting GO into an environmentally benign mineral," Tour said.

Essentially, Salas said, Shewanella have figured out how to "breathe" solid metal oxides. "These bacteria have turned themselves inside out. When we breathe oxygen, the reactions happen inside our cells. These microbes have taken those components and put them on the outside of their cells."

It is this capability that allows them to reduce GO to graphene. "It’s a mechanism we don’t understand completely because we didn’t know it was possible until a few months ago," he said of the process as it relates to GO.

The best news of all, Lüttge said, is that these metal-reducing bacteria "are found pretty much everywhere, so there will be no need to ‘inoculate’ the environment with them," he said. "These bacteria have been isolated from every imaginable environment – lakes, the sea floor, river mud, the open ocean, oil brines and even uranium mines."

He said the microbes also turn iron, chromium, uranium and arsenic compounds into "mostly benign" minerals. "Because of this, they’re playing a major role in efforts to develop bacteria-based bioremediation technologies."

Lüttge expects the discovery will lead to other practical technologies. His lab is investigating the interaction between bacteria and graphite electrodes to develop microbe-powered fuel cells, in collaboration with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and its Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI).

Co-authors of the first paper, "Improved Synthesis of Graphene Oxide," include postdoctoral research associates Dmitry Kosynkin, Jacob Berlin and Alexander Sinitskii; senior research scientist Lawrence Alemany; graduate students Daniela Marcano, Zhengzong Sun and Wei Lu and visiting research student Alexander Slesarev, all of Rice.

Salas, Tour, Lüttge and Sun are co-authors of the second paper, "Reduction of Graphene Oxide via Bacterial Respiration."

Funding for the projects came from the Alliance for NanoHealth, M-I SWACO, the Air Force Research Laboratory through the University Technology Corporation, the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy within the Hydrogen Sorption Center of Excellence, the Office of Naval Research MURI program on graphene, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Read the abstract for "Improved Synthesis of Graphene Oxide" at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn1006368.

Read the abstract for "Reduction of Graphene Oxide via Bacterial Respiration" at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn101081t.

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July 22, 2010 – Researchers at Oregon State U. have come up with yet another unique application for nanocoatings — help produce more electricity from sewage.

Their work, published a few weeks ago in Biosensors and Bioelectronics, focuses on the anodes of microbial electrochemical cells (MEC), the core of efforts to clean biowaste and produce useful levels of electricity, realizing twin goals of wastewater treatment and renewable energy. (OSU has been working on MECs for several years, hoping to develop systems for producing electricity from hydrogen fuel cells for automobiles.)

Bacteria from biowaste (i.e., sewage) is placed in an anode chamber, where they form a biofilm, consume nutrients, and grow, and that process releases electrons. Coating graphite anodes with a gold nanolayer increased the electricity production by 20×, they found; similar palladium coatings also produced an increase (50%-150%). They think iron nanoparticle coatings could produce similar electricity increases as gold — and cost a lot less. And a similar approach could be applied to producing hydrogen gas instead of electricity, toward use in hydrogen fuel cells e.g. in cars.

From the paper abstract:

Significant positive linear regression was obtained between the current density and the particle size (average Feret’s diameter and average area), while the circularity of the particles showed negative correlation with current densities. On the contrary, no significant correlation was evident between the current density and the particle density based on area fraction and particle counts. These results demonstrated that nano-decoration can greatly enhance the performance of microbial anodes, while the chemical composition, size and shape of the nanoparticles determined the extent of the enhancement.

More work is needed to get the process working beyond a lab environment, to lower its cost (e.g. identify the lowest-cost materials to use), and improve efficiency and electrical output even more. "We still need some improvements in design of the cathode chamber, and a better understanding of the interaction between different microbial species," added Frank Chaplen, an associate professor of biological and ecological engineering, in a statement. "But the new approach is clearly producing more electricity."

Ultimately, the researchers see the technology being used to reduce the cost of wastewater treatment, or in developing nations where wastewater treatment is impractical due to a lack of adequate power supply. Sewage treatment plants could be made to be completely self-sufficient in terms of energy usage, they say.

The research is supported by the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI) and the National Science Foundation.

(July 21, 2010) — The Institute of Microelectronics (IME), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), announced a collaborative partnership with Stanford University to develop silicon-nanowire-based circuits that are inspired by the brain. Under the research collaborative agreement, IME and Stanford will jointly develop silicon nanowire based neuromorphic computational elements (silicon neurons) that take advantage of the capabilities of nanowire technology.

The quest to come up with an artificial system organized like the biological nervous system promises to drive the future of humanoid robots and supercomputers that can perform highly complex decision-making for gaming and defense technologies. The electronics systems using neuromorphic designs aim to work like the biological nervous system. The collaboration represents a further expansion of the extensive neuromorphic computing activities at Stanford University and provides a new application opportunity for nanowire transistors developed at IME.

The partnership leverages on the relative strengths of the respective institute. IME is a leading laboratory in the fabrication of nanowire transistors, with considerable progress reported in recent years, including the demonstration of functional circuits. Stanford University has a leading group in neuromorphic engineering, an approach to designing systems that work like the brain.

The joint project will be led by Dr Navab Singh, Principal Investigator of the NanoElectronics section at IME, and Associate Professor Kwabena Boahen, Director of the Brains In Silicon group at Stanford University. The project will tap Stanford University’s expertise in neuromorphic design to model and design silicon neuron circuits.  The circuits will be fabricated by IME using state-of-the-art nanowire technology, more specifically, the lateral gate-all-around FUSI gate transistor technology.

“The gate all around (GAA) transistors based on silicon nanowires are considered the most promising alternatives to scaling limitations of planar CMOS technology — foundation of today’s electronics. Nanowire transistors offer near ideal subthreshold behaviour, low off state leakage, and high drive current — all the characteristics required to enable a highly integrated design that works with little power, much like the real brain. On the other hand, due to nanowire’s structure and strong response in respect to tiny change in dimension, nanowire transistors also exhibit increased variability, strong low frequency and telegraph-style noise that are interesting to niche applications,” said Dr Singh.

On the unique characteristics of nanowire transistors, Associate Professor Boahen said, “Our joint mission is to develop revolutionary architectures that would be tolerant to, or better yet, thrive under the variability and noise. Interestingly, variability and noise are key elements of a biological brain.”

Professor Dim-Lee Kwong, executive director of IME, said, “IME’s alliance with Stanford University to develop neuromorphic test circuits will be a window to the future of an emerging discipline that is expected to have a ripple effect on a broad spectrum of industries.”

The Institute of Microelectronics (IME) is a research institute of the Science and Engineering Research Council of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) of Singapore. A*STAR oversees 14 biomedical  sciences, and physical sciences and engineering research institutes, and seven consortia & centre, which are located in Biopolis and Fusionopolis, as well as their immediate vicinity. For more information about A*STAR, visit www.a-star.edu.sg

Also read:

Fully gate-all-around silicon nanowire CMOS devices

Although CVD-grown nanowires are good for demonstration purposes, getting them into manufacturing calls for the utilization of CMOS fabrication methods … (Solid State Technology, 2008, Volume 51, Issue 5, co-authored by Dr. Navab Singh and Professor Dim-Lee Kwong)

Toshiba tips Si nanowires for 16nm chips

Presenting at the VLSI Symposium, Toshiba says it has developed a silicon nanowire transistor with vastly improved on-current levels, targeting 16nm and beyond system LSIs … (Small Times, 2010, online issue)

(July 20, 2010) — In this video, Andrew Thompson, Proteus Biomedical, envisions use of mobile electronics and bio-compatible electronics to resolve global health issues. He explains the possibilities, and the affect this focus can have on the cost structure of healthcare.

Proteus Biomedical’s Ben Costello will keynote the Medical Electronics Symposium: "Successful Strategies for the Medical Electronics Sector: Steady Growth Keeps the Momentum Moving Forward," September 22-23 in Tempe, AZ. At that conference, Proteus Biomedical’s VP of product engineering will discuss intelligent medicine. Learn more about the keynotes at the Medical Electronics Symposium.