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Don't Miss IEEE on the Today Show
Don’t miss IEEE member Karen Panetta, Chair of IEEE Women in Engineering, on the Today Show this Friday, 18 July during the 10 am hour. Panetta, who also serves as Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine will be talking about IEEE and Nerd Girls—a growing segment of women engineers who are challenging the notion of what a geek should look like by mixing girly interests with traditionally techie pursuits.
Small, Powerful Sensor Detection Technology Goal of EU Project
A European Union (EU)-backed, three-year project called NEMSIC (Nano-electro-mechanical-system-integrated-circuits) is backing a group of scientists who aim to launch the world's smallest, high-performance and low-power sensor in silicon. The team says this latest development will be very sensitive and consume little power, and will be applied in biosensing and environmental monitoring. A successful launch will depend on the co-integration of single-electron transistors and nano-electro-mechanical systems on a common silicon technology platform. Professor Hiroshi Mizuta, of the U.K.’s University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), which is participating in the project, says that the focus is on the consumption of power because devices use currents whether they are running or not. The team will develop the single-electron transistor with a suspended silicon nanobridge that detects biological and chemical molecules. An innovative electron beam lithography machine, located at ECS, will be used to produce these devices. The NEMSIC consortium includes researchers from Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Read more
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Qimonda and Siltronic Join to Research Next-Gen Transistors
Basic research for future transistor architectures is the combined mission of memory chip maker Qimonda AG and wafer manufacturer Siltronic AG. Part of the €6.5 million (about US$10.2 million) SIGMADT research project funded by the German federal research ministry, the research focuses on three-dimensional (3-D) transistors which will enable smaller geometries, use less power and maintain higher switching frequencies. The two-year project aims to find the set of physical wafer properties that best match requirements of 3-D manufacturing, as well as develop a manufacturing process for the wafers to be used to produce 3-D transistors. Read more
Learn more about transistors in IEEE Xplore®
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Shrinking Chip to Keep up With Moore's Law Developed
Thanks to a new approach that produces grids of parallel lines 25 nanometers (nm) wide using light with a wavelength of 351 nm, silicon chips could become even more densely packed with transistors. The breakthrough, which carves features in silicon that are many times smaller than the wavelength of the light used to make them, could keep the computing world on track with Moore’s Law. While the grids are not functional circuits, they could be made into working chips by adding extra small features. Read more
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Call for Papers: Signals, Circuits and Systems Conference
Located in Nabeul, Tunisia, the 2008 Conference on Signals, Circuits and Systems (SCS 2008) is being held 7-9 November 2009. Sponsored by the IEEE Signal Processing Society and the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, the conference will be an international forum for researchers and specialists to exchange new ideas and practical experiences. It will provide an opportunity to present and observe the latest research, results and ideas, and to collaborate on current issues in signals, circuits and systems research. Papers are being requested in a variety of related fields, including signal processing, embedded systems, nanotechnologies, sensing and control, robotics, biomedical circuits and systems, neural networks and computer communications. For a full list of acceptable paper topics, visit the SCS 2008 Call for Papers
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Engineers Show Nanotube Circuits Can Be Mass Produced
Researchers at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA, recently unveiled a method for making integrated circuit chips with complex nanotube components that are economical and can be produced in mass. Because of their potential to act as high-performance transistors at higher speeds and lower power than conventional silicon technology, nanotubes are the subject of intensive research worldwide. So far, however, researchers have only been able to make nanotube circuits one at a time, rather than on the scale known as VLSI, or Very Large Scale Integration. This new ability to make chips on a large scale with the needed variety of logic gates represents an important advance toward making commercially viable nanotube integrated circuits. The Stanford-devised process involves growing nanotubes on a quartz wafer—a 4-inch diameter platter—and then transferring them like a kid's temporary tattoo onto a silicon wafer patterned with metal electrodes. The nanotubes could then connect the electrodes to make transistors and logic gates. Read more
Learn more about nanotube circuits in IEEE Xplore®
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Energy Efficient Transistor Developed Using Nanotechnology
Researchers have now been able to develop a new type of transistor, using nanotechnology, which is said to be 50 times more energy efficient than contemporary models. This new model is made up of indium arsenide (InAs), in which electrons can move around more easily than silicon. Producing transistors using InAs is a nontrivial task, but researchers were able to accomplish this by exploiting nanotechnology concepts. They made the material self-organized according to a bottom-up principle instead of the conventional ‘carving-out’ method. Besides enabling smaller transistor sizes and therefore smaller electronic gadgets, another significant advantage made possible by this energy efficient transistor is that batteries in mobile phones and portable computers can last longer and will not need to be recharged as often. Lars-Erik Wernersson, Professor of Solid State Physics at Lund University in Sweden, says that their transistor model can also pave the way for communicating in frequencies that are too high for today’s technology. Read more
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ICON Focuses on Standards to Keep Nanotechnology Safe
Over the last decade, the study and use of nanoparticles has been met with both enthusiasm for its potential (to make stronger materials, treat diseases and produce energy) and fear for its risks (including the unknown effects of nanoparticles' interactions with living organisms). Industry standards and practices in such areas as terminology, measurement and characterization, toxicity testing and safe handling in occupational settings would promote better risk management. However, the myriad types of nanomaterials and ways to purposely change their properties make testing variants unrealistic, resulting in a limited knowledge base for standards development. Vital steps toward this goal have been taken by the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON), which conducted two workshops for more than 70 experts from academia, industry, government and nongovernment organizations representing the United States, Europe and Asia. One workshop focused on identifying classes of nanomaterials with common properties and potential issues in their full lifecycle assessment. The second workshop focused on developing a prioritized research agenda for understanding the effects and mechanisms of nano-biological interactions. The objective of both events was to outline the research steps needed to provide predictive models within the next 10 years, with an ultimate goal of enabling the design of biocompatible nanomaterials and heading off any unwanted consequences of nanomaterial use. Read more
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Researchers Seek to Turn Contact Lenses into Tiny Personal Displays
Babak Parviz, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Seattle’s University of Washington, USA, is experimenting with contact lenses that contain extremely small electronic circuits and will eventually feature light-emitting diodes (microLEDs). Once powered, possibly by radio frequency or photovoltaic (solar) cells, these devices would turn Parviz’s lenses into an extremely small yet sophisticated personal display. Parviz makes tiny but functional electronic devices and, via nanotechnology and microfabrication techniques, integrates them onto polymers (such as contact lens material) or glass using a process known as self-assembly. Challenges still lie in ways to project an image at the right distance for the eye to focus on and, most importantly, biocompatibility and eye safety. If these issues are resolved, Parviz says programmable wireless contact lenses could be used to “augment reality,” such as superimposing text messages or direction arrows on the wearer’s view of the world, as an aid to the hearing impaired. Gaming, telecom and other medical applications could also exist. “The driver is not to make something small,” says Parviz. “The driver is to make something that's cool and useful. Having a display in a contact lens is very useful.” Read more
Learn more about microfabrication techniques in IEEE Xplore®
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Project Targets On-the-Spot Testing for Bacteria and Disease
Salmonella and campylobacter are nasty bacteria responsible for most cases of food poisoning around the world. The current process for detecting infectious bacteria on farms or in food processing and distribution plants involves sending samples to labs for testing, taking hours or days. But a team of European researchers have created a prototype system that prepares samples and performs DNA tests on food-born bacteria in the field, in a portable, easy-to-use and cost-effective chip. To improve detection accuracy, the team concentrated the sample before testing, using magnetophoresis and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. Since PCR works with DNA, the same device can be used to detect many different types of bacteria and diseases. Developed in the European Union (EU)-funded OptoLabCard project, the team’s work will lead to the development of portable devices that can detect bacteria in the food chain, including diseases as diverse as cancer, hepatitis, AIDS and the flu, as well as identify pathogens and pollution in water supplies. “The uses for these devices are almost endless… and the market is huge,” explains Jesús M. Ruano-López, coordinator of the OptoLabCard project at Ikerlan-IK4 in Spain. The Danish Institute for Food and Veterinary Research soon will conduct a trial in chicken farms in Denmark. The device is expected to be commercially ready in three years. Read more
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Electronics, Circuits and Systems Conference
The 2008 IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS 2008) will provide attendees with a major international forum for presenting design methodologies, techniques and experimental results in emerging electronics, circuits and smart systems topics.
The conference, which is being held 31 August – 3 September 2008 at the Westin Dragonara Resort in St. Julian’s, Malta, will include regular, special and poster sessions. Specific topics of interest include analogue circuits and signal processing, general circuits and systems, digital signal processing, VLSI, multimedia and communication, computational methods and optimization, neural systems, control systems, MEMS, advanced technologies, industrial and biomedical applications, power systems and power electronic circuits, photonic and optoelectronic circuits and electronic education. Learn more
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