future electronics

A research team working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found an explanation for the extreme sensitivity to mechanical pressure or voltage of a special class of solid materials called relaxors. The ability to control and tailor this sensitivity would allow industry to enhance a range of devices used in medical […]

Even before Weixiao Huang received his doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his new transistor captured the attention of some of the biggest American and Japanese automobile companies. The 2008 graduate’s invention could replace one of the most common pieces of technology in the world — the silicon transistor for high-power and high-temperature electronics.
Huang, who comes […]

The goal of replacing electronics with optics for processing data in computers is coming closer through cutting edge European research into the mysterious properties of “fast and slow” light. The long term aim is to boost processing speeds and data storage densities by several orders of magnitude and take the information technology industry into a […]

University of Utah engineers took an early step toward building superfast computers that run on far-infrared light instead of electricity: They made the equivalent of wires that carried and bent this form of light, also known as terahertz radiation, which is the last unexploited portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
“We have taken a first step to […]

A collaboration between the Universities of Leeds and Harvard has turned the heat up on terahertz technology, bringing a handheld terahertz device a step closer to reality.
The Leeds team, led by Professors Edmund Linfield and Giles Davies from the Faculty of Engineering, has recorded the highest operating temperature for a terahertz quantum cascade laser — […]

Research results from University of Maryland physicists show that graphene, a new material that combines aspects of semiconductors and metals, could be a leading candidate to replace silicon in applications ranging from high-speed computer chips to biochemical sensors.
The research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnolgy, reveals […]

As computers become more complex, the demand increases for more connections between computer chips and external circuitry such as a motherboard or wireless card. And as the integrated circuits become more advanced, maximizing their performance requires better connections that operate at higher frequencies with less loss.
Improving these two types of connections will increase the amount […]