Research

Kioxia claims to have developed the world’s first three-dimensional semicircular split-gate flash memory cell structure, twin BiCS flash, using floating gate (FG) cells. The firm says twin BiCS flash achieves superior program slope and a larger program/erase window at a much smaller cell size compared to conventional circular charge trap (CT) cells. These attributes make the design a candidate to ...

Neural nets are trained black boxes that remain opaque under close scrutiny

A diagnostic device (pictured) developed by Imec subsidiary miDiagnostics has been chosen by NASA is to check human blood samples in space. The miDiagnostics device can perform a complete cell blood count (CBC) from only drops of blood Imec will design test parameters and perform experiments in different gravity scenarios using one of miDiagnostics’ devices that is built around a ...

Three new centres to train the next generation of engineers could be built on Hereford’s Enterprise Zone after the Marches LEP agreed a £5.66 million funding package for the city’s proposed new university.   The decision follows a submission of a business case to the LEP from the New Model in Technology and Engineering (NMiTE) supporting the development of new ...

Planning application is submitted for the development of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS)

Japanese researchers created an optical modulator using a thin layer of water, and got surprisingly good results. The Tokyo University of Science team was trying to find a way to exploit the large Pockels effect discovered in water by some of the same scientists in 2007. This effect is the linear change in refractive index with applied electric field that is ...

Hot electron capture would be one way to improve the efficiency of Perovskite solar cells, by directing the energy of those electrons to the external circuit, rather than allowing it to become heat within the semiconductor. Now a team from University of Groningen in the Netherlands and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore think they have seen useful hot electron capture ...

MIT’s dacing, prancing, jumping footballing cheetahs weigh 20lb and can run at 6mph. The machines can perform a 360deg back-flip from a standing position. “When it’s running, its feet are only on the ground for something like 150 milliseconds at a time, during which a computer tells it to increase the force on the foot, then change it to balance, ...

Engineers at Rutgers University are claiming 11.8μΩ.cm for conductors printed inside plastic structures, created by printing a novel silver ink and exposing it to high intensity light. The ink has both silver nano-wires and silver nano-spheres within it. These are fused using ‘intense pulsed light sintering’ with a xenon lamp, that is brief enough not to damage the surrounding structural printed ...

Perovskite solar cells can be made in open air and “last for months rather than days with a solar conversion efficiency slightly above 12%” according to Rice University if some of the Pb is replaced with indium. The switch also reduces defects that skew the cell’s bandgap. “From our perspective, this is something new and I think it represents an ...