Cheap semiconductor spectrometer has high-end performance

Spectrometers are useful bits of kit if you want to investigate the spectra of light sources or the absorption characteristics of a material through which a reference light source is shone. A new semiconductor manufacturing technique developed at MIT now promises small, high-performance low-cost spectrometers suitable for a wide range of new applications...

Imec, the renowned Belgian research center has demonstrated a new and cost-effective method of cooling chips at the package level. This technique is a good solution for today’s power-hungry high performance chips...

Samsung unveiled its upcoming 7nm FinFET technology at the VLSI Symposia recently. Samsung is expected to be the first of the major semiconductor manufacturers to employ Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) lithography for the process - EUV provides improved pattern uniformity and lower manufacturing costs compared to standard extreme-scaling multi-patterning processes...

Researchers at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science have synthesized the first nanoscale molecule that offers better electrical insulation than a vacuum. To make the breakthrough the team exploited the wave nature of electrons. They made a rigid silicon-based molecule less than 1 nm in length that creates destructive interference signatures, thereby producing a novel method to block tunneling conduction at the nanoscale level and allow even smaller transistors to be fabricated...