TechBlog

The biggest impediments to widespread adoption of photovoltaic cells as a routine source of energy are the cells’ inadequate efficiency and high cost. According to EE Times, IBM has taken a major step toward removing those barriers. Critical to the new development is the devices’ cooling mechanism, which employs a liquid metal layer of gallium and indium between the chip logic and a cooling block. The technology will eventually allow constructing applications that generate much more electricity with many fewer chips. Larger lenses are increasing the concentration of solar rays by a factor of ten, raising power levels significantly.

This undated handout photo provided by IBM and the Feature Photo Service shows lead engineer Don Grice of IBM inspecting the world’s fastest computer, nicknamed “Roadrunner”, in the company’s Poughkeepsie, N.Y. plant. Scientists unveiled the world’s fastest supercomputer on Monday, June 9, 2008, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise. The technology breakthrough was accomplished by engineers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the IBM Corp. on a computer to be used primarily on nuclear weapons work, including simulating nuclear explosions. (AP Photo/IBM, Feature Photo Service)

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In response to the electronics industry’s rallying cry of “smaller and faster,” the next breakthroughs in the electronics size barrier are likely to come from microchips and data storage devices created out of novel materials such as organic molecules and polymers. With innovative measurement techniques and new ways to position the molecules, NIST researchers reported at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society how they have improved manipulation of so-called block copolymers—polymers made of a mixture of two or more different molecule building blocks that are tethered at a junction point—which can form arrays of tiny dots that could be used as the basis for electronic components that pack terabytes (1000 gigabytes) of memory in something as small as a pack of gum.

One of the challenges in polymer nanotechnology is how to control their self-assembly—a hard-to-control process for materials which require precision. An important recent NIST accomplishment has been in developing accurate measurements of thin film polymeric nanostructure in 3-D. (Ironically, while determining atomic structure is well-established, measuring the slightly larger internal structure of the polymers—on the order of 10 to 20 nanometers—is much harder.) Ron Jones, together with colleagues from NIST, the University of Maryland and IBM, has used NIST’s neutron scattering and reflectivity facility to deflect neutrons off block copolymer films from many different angles. By combining the many 2-D neutron scattering pictures into a single composite scattering pattern, this technique provides the first quantitative method for imaging the 3-D internal structure of thin film polymeric nanostructures using neutron scattering—a crucial tool to see if the nanoscale polymer structures are in their required positions.

NIST researchers also have developed new insights on how best to nudge these self-assembling material into those positions. August Bosse will report on computer simulations that model how the polymers assemble when they are placed on templates lined with troughs separated by crests. When a heated zone is swept across the template, the polymer molecules assemble into almost defect free, well-aligned lines faster over the entire template, an important feature for nanotech manufacturing applications. Sangcheol Kim (working with a team that included researchers from the University of Maryland and IBM) has found that changing the surface chemistry of the template by making some parts hydrophillic and some parts hydrophobic also can elegantly control the dimension of the block-copolymer pattern relative to the chemical template.

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The world’s first transceiver integrated on a single chip that operates at 60GHz on the CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) process, the most common semiconductor technology, was announced recently by NICTA, Australia’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence.The development will enable the truly wireless office and home of the future. As the integrated transceiver developed by NICTA is extremely small, it can be embedded into devices. The breakthrough will mean the networking of office and home equipment - without wires - will finally become a reality.

Researchers from NICTA’s Gigabit Wireless Project, which is based out of NICTA’s Victoria Research Laboratory, are the first in the world to have developed an integrated transceiver, a complete transmitter and receiver, on a single chip at 60GHz on CMOS.

This technology breakthrough will enable the wireless transfer of audio and video data at up to 5 gigabits per second, ten times the current maximum wireless transfer rate, at one-tenth the cost.

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