TechBlog

Test engineers in industries ranging from aerospace and defense to consumer electronics are facing the challenge of testing increasingly complicated designs with shrinking timelines and budgets. To address these issues, engineers and scientists are incorporating new test and measurement technologies that are capable of meeting complex design requirements without raising costs. National Instruments (NI) has identified five trends it anticipates will significantly influence the test and measurement industry over the next three years.”Companies are turning to the latest technologies including PXI, FPGAs and multicore processors to develop high-performance test systems that can meet consumer demand for higher-quality products,” said Eric Starkloff, National Instruments director of test product marketing.

“Fortunately, more technology vendors are developing industry-standard tools capable of solving problems that previously depended on expensive, dedicated test systems.”

Continue reading ‘Test And Measurement Industry Trends Toward Software-Defined Instrumentation’ »

Acoustic waves play many everyday roles – from communication between people to ultrasound imaging. Now the highest frequency acoustic waves in materials, with nearly atomic-scale wavelengths, promise to be useful probes of nanostructures such as LED lights.

However, detecting them isn’t so easy.

Continue reading ‘Visualizing Atomic-Scale Acoustic Waves In Nanostructures’ »

The new NIR / Red Enhanced 6mm² ODA-6W-500M Photodetector-Preamplifier from Opto Diode Corporation is a photodiode preamplifier combination device that features higher gain in lower light environments. The low light, high sensitivity component has a large active area that operates in the NIR wavelength with response at 940 nm (typically 315 V/µW, min. 290). The standard 6mm² ODA-6W-500M offers 500 Mohm gain with custom gains also available, per customer specifications. Opto Diode’s new component is based on their proprietary shielded amplifier electronics, featuring extremely low noise and high sensitivity in the red enhanced preamp combination detector.

Smaller and more compact than discrete solutions, the hermetically-sealed TO-39 can is highly suitable for assembly in confined spaces. Ideal for applications such as fluorescence, microscopy and analytical chemistry, the detector is designed for easy integration into new and existing systems. Storage and operating temperature ranges from -25 degrees C to +100 degrees C.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world’s largest provider of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) panels announced today that it has developed the world’s first “Blue Phase” LCD panel – which will offer more natural moving images with an unprecedented image-driving speed of 240 Hertz. Samsung is planning to unveil a 15” model of its Blue Phase LCD panel at the SID (Society for Information Display) 2008 international Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition, which will be held in Los Angeles from May 18 to 23.

Executive Vice President Souk Jun-hyung, the head of LCD Business’ Display R&D Center, said that “Our Blue Phase mode is a major evolutionary development beyond conventional liquid crystal modes. Samsung’s development of the technology provides a tremendous opportunity to move image quality of LCD screens much closer to that of a real moving image.”

Continue reading ‘Samsung Develops World’s First “Blue Phase” Technology to Achieve 240 Hz Driving Speed for High-Speed Video’ »

Human-implantable RFID microchips face an uncertain future in the wake of developments that the technology’s developer, VeriChip, announced last week. The Delray Beach, Florida-based company announced it sold most of its assets to tool manufacturer Stanley Works for $45 million and that the rest of the company is for sale (see VeriChip Sells an RFID Business, More Change May Come). The remaining company essentially consists of the VeriMed Health Link business line, a patient identification service based on VeriChip’s controversial, FDA-approved line of implantable RFID tags for lifetime human identification.

“That business is not self-sustainable,” VeriChip vice president of corporate development Jay McKeage candidly told RFID Update. “It cannot stand on its own because of the cash burn involved in marketing to consumers.”

VeriMed Health Link is a service in which patients have an RFID tag injected under their skin in the arm to provide lifetime identification. The tag is encoded with a 16-digit unique ID number, which medical professionals with VeriChip-issued readers can use to access the patient’s complete medical history from a secure database. VeriChip markets the system on patient-safety benefits — emergency room doctors or other medical staff can access a patient’s medical history without relying on a patient response or an ID card. The idea is that even if a patient arrives unconscious or otherwise uncommunicative, his or her complete medical history is still accessible. The FDA approved VeriChip’s human-implantable passive RFID microchips in 2004, but adoption has been limited.

Continue reading ‘Implantable RFID Business ‘Not Self-Sustainable’’ »

Gnat-sized robots, microscopic gyroscopes, television beamed directly onto your retina. This may sound like a grocery list for a crazed sci-fi visionary. But all these projects are in the works today, thanks to an emerging chip technology known as microelectromechanical systems. While magical microbots may still be a few years away, MEMS are already a multibillion-dollar business in the car, printer, and display-projection industries.

Traditional chips are flat, static structures. MEMS, by contrast, are silicon wafers packed with kinetic, three-dimensional gizmos: laboratories, laser-guided mirrors, canals flowing with chemicals. An offshoot of the semiconductor industry, MEMS benefit from the well-known peculiarities of the silicon universe - every year chips get tinier, cheaper, and faster.

Continue reading ‘As the MEMS Revolution Takes Off, Small Is Getting Bigger Every Day’ »

White organic light-emitting diodes offer a power efficiency, lifetime, and brightness that together constitute a significant advance toward viable devices for lighting.

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are used in both displays and illumination applications because they are small, robust, and potentially very efficient. Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) continue to gain attention from the scientific and industrial community. In contrast to their inorganic counterpart, OLEDs are flat and diffuse area light sources with the device thickness being in the range of 1–2mm. Thus far, OLED development has been triggered mainly by applications in the display segment, starting with applications for MP3 music players, mobile phones, and other portable devices. Recently, Sony brought to market the first OLED TV, which indicates that a more general penetration of the display market is close at hand.

OLEDs have not yet entered the lighting market, but that will probably change soon. Already most of the big players in the field are preparing for OLEDs to become ‘the next big thing.’ However, several critical problems need to be solved before widespread use for lighting becomes feasible. Specifically, the lifetimes, power efficiencies, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of white OLEDs must be able to compete with existing lighting technologies.

Continue reading ‘Making highly efficient white light-emitting diodes’ »

A schematic of graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistor with palladium contacts (S,D) on a 10 nm thick insulating silicon dioxide surface (purple). Beneath the Si02 layer is a highly conductive silicon layer (G). Credit: Stanford University.

Stanford chemists have developed a new way to make transistors out of carbon nanoribbons. The devices could someday be integrated into high-performance computer chips to increase their speed and generate less heat, which can damage today’s silicon-based chips when transistors are packed together tightly.

Continue reading ‘Carbon nanoribbons could make smaller, speedier computer chips’ »

Antennas serve as transducers between electromagnetic waves traveling in free space and guided electromagnetic signals in circuits. As such, they play a critical role in the performance of wireless communication systems. With the proliferation of mobile wireless services that deliver voice and/or data in smaller and smaller devices, the task to design an antenna for a portable unit that meets not only operational requirements but also aesthetic and packaging restrictions is becoming more and more challenging. As result, engineers rely on a combination of theory, simulation, and experimental investigation to arrive at a design that meets all the demands of a particular application.

Basic Antenna Parameters

The basic parameters of antenna are impedence, mismatch and ohmic efficiency, radiation pattern and polarization, directivity, gain and equivalent isotropically radiated power, and effective height and aperture. In addition, celebrated Friis equation is and equations for the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of an antenna and source-field relationships are also important.For a more detailed treatment of the material pointed out here, the reader is referred to “A HANDBOOK OF ANTENNA IN WIRELESS COMMUNICATION” OF CRC Press by Lal Chand Godara.

Continue reading ‘Future Antennas Will be Flat’ »

Corning Glass

Corning is a world leader in delivering advanced optical solutions for a wide variety of markets. For over 150 years, Corning has solved complex material and process challenges across multiple, diverse industries. By calling upon its unmatched heritage in innovation and its unrivaled understanding of glass science, Corning enables applications for a broad array of commercial and industrial markets and sets the bar for state-of-the-art product design, superior manufacturing processes and techniques and above all, performance excellence.

Vertically Integrated Manufacturing

Corning is one of very few manufacturers with deep capabilities in materials science, optical design, shaping, coating, finishing and assembly. For customers this means reduced complexity, shortened manufacturing cycles and ultimately increased value. Corning delivers what its customers need - complete, end-to-end advanced solutions - efficiently, predictably and consistently. Continue reading ‘Corning’s Specialty Materials’ »