Science and Enterprise

Tag: semiconductors

  • NSF Grant to Fund R&D on Wireless Network Chip Connections

    Engineers at Drexel University in Philadelphia are developing semiconductors using wireless connections in a network to exchange data among the chip’s components. The project is funded by a three-year $400,000 grant from National Science Foundation’s Electrical, Communications, and Cyber Systems division. The research is led by electrical engineering professor Baris Taskin (pictured left), who directs…

  • New Quantum Dot Material Boosts Solar Cell Efficiency

    Engineers at University of Toronto in Canada and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia developed a film made of nanoscale semiconductors called quantum dots for inexpensive and more efficient solar cells. The team led by Toronto engineering professor Ted Sargent published its findings in a letter to the journal Nature…

  • University, Company to Develop Advanced Infrared Detectors

    Rochester Institute of Technology in New York received a National Science Foundation grant for research on infrared detectors grown on silicon wafers, with potential applications in astronomy, remote sensing, and medical imaging. The $1.2 million award will fund RIT’s development, fabrication, and testing of a new type of detectors grown on silicon wafer substrates by…

  • Air Force Grant to Fund Research on Nanomaterials Shaping

    Funding from the U.S. Air Force is supporting multi-disciplinary research on the ability of nanomaterials to change their shape in response to external stimuli, such as heat and light. The $2.9 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research will support a project that touches on chemistry, biology, computer science, and engineering, led…

  • Grant Funds Feasibility Study of Photonic Ethernet Chips

    A researcher at Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby has received a DKK 2.2 million ($US 370,000) grant to study the use of photonics to achieve high-speed Ethernet transfers on silicon chips. The grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research will fund the work of photonics staff researcher Hao Hu (pictured left) at Alcatel-Lucent-Bell…

  • Memory Device Maker Secures $12.5 Million Venture Loan

    Avalanche Technology, a developer of digital memory devices in Fremont, California has received a $12.5 million loan from Horizon Technology Finance Corporation in Farmington, Connecticut. Horizon Technology Finance calls the deal a venture loan, since the debt is secured by earlier venture capital and private equity financing. The funding is expected to support Avalanche Technology’s…

  • Univ. Start-Up Developing High-Energy Light for Microchips

    Engineers in a University of Washington fusion-energy lab have started a new company that aims to apply their discoveries to the semiconductor industry. Uri Shumlak, an aeronautics and astronautics professor, and research associate professor Brian Nelson are applying their research on high-energy plasma light from fusion reactors to meet a high-priority need of microchip developers.…

  • New Data Encoding Method Cuts Energy for Memory Cards

    Engineers and computer scientists at Rice University in Houston and University of California in Los Angeles have discovered a way to write data on computer memory cards that cuts the energy needed for the task by 30 percent. The team from Rice’s Adaptive Computing and Embedded Systems Laboratory, led by Ph.D. student Azalia Mirhoseini (pictured…

  • Chip Set Developed for High Speed Wireless Data Transfers

    Computer scientists at Nanyang Technological University and Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) in Singapore have developed a microchip that can transmit large volumes of data at speeds of 2 gigabits per second, or 1,000 times faster than current Bluetooth technology. At that speed, a 2-hour, 8-gigabyte movie could be transferred in about half a minute,…

  • Nanotech Fabrication Process Developed for Smaller Chips

    Engineers at Stanford University and two Silicon Valley companies in California have devised a method of creating contact hole patterns for semiconductors that can reduce the size of logic and memory chips, while maintaining their fabrication accuracy. The findings of the team led by Stanford engineering professor H.-S. Philip Wong (pictured left) appear online in the…