Category Technology/Electronics

Researchers turned to biology to help in the design of next-generation computers. Moore’s law – which says the number of components that could be etched onto the surface of silicon wafer would double every two years – has been the subject of recent debate. The quicker pace of computing advancements in the past decade have led some experts to say Moore’s law, the brainchild of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the 1960s, no longer applies...

The next big miniaturization step in microelectronics could soon become possible — with so-called 2D materials. With the help of a novel insulator made of calcium fluoride, scientists have created an ultra-thin transistor, which has excellent electrical properties and, in contrast to previous technologies, can be miniaturized to an extremely small size.

For decades, the transistors on our microchips have become smaller, faster and cheaper. Approximately every two years the number of transistors on commercial chips has doubled – this phenomenon became known as “Moore’s Law...

Engineers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have created a new multi-material 3D nanoprinting technique that was featured on the inside front cover of the July 21 issue of Lab on a Chip.

The team’s new technique—capable of printing tiny multi-material structures a fraction of the size of a human hair—offers researchers a faster, cheaper, and more accurate means to 3D print these highly complex structures because the process uses a very simple molding process that is widely used in most microfluidics labs.

To demonstrate their new approach, the researchers 3D nanoprinted a variety of mu...

University of Illinois electrical engineers have cleared another hurdle in high-power semiconductor fabrication by adding the field’s hottest material – beta-gallium oxide – to their arsenal. Beta-gallium oxide is readily available and promises to convert power faster and more efficiently than today’s leading semiconductor materials – gallium nitride and silicon, the researchers said. Their findings are published in the journal ACS Nano.

Flat transistors have become about as small as is physically possible, but researchers addressed this problem by going vertical...