microchip tagged posts

New Microchip Links Two Nobel Prize-winning Techniques

New microchip links two Nobel Prize-winning techniques
Artists’ impression of the trampoline-shaped sensor. The laser beam that passes through the middle of the trampoline membrane creating the overtone vibrations inside the material. Credit: Sciencebrush

Physicists at Delft University of Technology have built a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning techniques for the first time. This microchip could measure distances in materials at high precision—for example, underwater or for medical imaging.

Because the technology uses sound vibrations instead of light, it is useful for high-precision position measurements in opaque materials. The instrument could lead to new techniques to monitor the Earth’s climate and human health. The work is now published in Nature Communications.

Simple and low-power technolog...

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Scalable Method to Manufacture Thin Film Transistors achieves Ultraclean Interface

Scalable method to manufacture thin film transistors achieves ultra-clean interface for high performance, low-voltage device ope
Microchip containing thin film transistors having record sub-threshold slope, made using the in situ atomic layer deposition process. Credit: Silvia Cardarelli, Michigan ECE

Prof. Becky Peterson at the University of Michigan leads a team that has developed a scalable, manufacturable method for developing thin film transistors (TFTs) that operate at the lowest possible voltage. This is particularly important for TFT integration with today’s silicon complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOS), which are used in the vast majority of integrated circuits.

“We’re essentially developing a less complicated device that operates at lower voltage,” said ECE Ph.D. student Tonglin (Tanya) Newsom, who is first author on the paper...

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Sound Waves power New Advances in Drug Delivery and Smart Materials

The patented ‘Respite’ nebuliser uses high-frequency sound waves to precisely deliver drugs to the lungs.
The patented ‘Respite’ nebuliser uses high-frequency sound waves to precisely deliver drugs to the lungs.

Researchers have revealed how high-frequency sound waves can be used to build new materials, make smart nanoparticles and even deliver drugs to the lungs for painless, needle-free vaccinations.

While sound waves have been part of science and medicine for decades — ultrasound was first used for clinical imaging in 1942 and for driving chemical reactions in the 1980s — the technologies have always relied on low frequencies.

Now researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have shown how high frequency sound waves could revolutionise the field of ultrasound-driven chemistry.

A new review published in Advanced Science reveals the bizarre effects of these sound w...

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Scientists drill into White Graphene to Create Artificial Atoms

Laser light (green arrow) generates low-level light emitted from a single photon (purple arrow) at the edges of holes in white graphene atop a glass slide.
Credit: Illustration by Joshua Ziegler

Patterned on a microchip and working in ambient conditions, the atoms could lead to rapid advancements in new quantum-based technology. By drilling holes into a thin two-dimensional sheet of hexagonal boron nitride with a gallium-focused ion beam, University of Oregon scientists have created artificial atoms that generate single photons.

The artificial atoms – which work in air and at room temperature – may be a big step in efforts to develop all-optical quantum computing, said UO physicist Benjamín J. Alemán, principal investigator of a study published in the journal Nano Letters.

“Ou...

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