September 2nd, 2008, by pur, in
Research
IMEC aims to develop a reproducible process for high-efficiency organic solar cells using Plextronics’ Plexcore® branded materials and inks, which have demonstrated world-record efficiencies as high as 5.9%, according to recent testing at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado. In the first phase, IMEC will investigate Plexcore® OS, which is a regioregular poly-3-hexylthiophene (P3HT) polymer with a high absorption coefficient close to the maximum photon flux in the solar spectrum and high mobility. Future research will include evaluation of other Plexcore® materials and inks, using deposition techniques such as screen and inkjet printing and spray coating on large-area substrates…
Embedded/Real-time and Mobile Application Operating Systems study data from Venture Development Corporation’s (VDC) lead to the conclusion that the overall embedded software code base may be growing at a rate of approximately 9% per year. VDC expects projects using commercial and open source operating systems to represent the bulk of total embedded software code base growth going forward. Furthermore, VDC’s findings suggest that engineers working on projects using commercial, open source, and in-house operating systems, as well as those using no formal operating system (running on their target system), all expect, on average, to employ significantly greater amounts of software code on their next embedded design…
The SRAM cell utilizes a conventional six-transistor design and has an area of 0.1um2, breaking the previous SRAM scaling barriers. SRAM cell size is a key technology metric in the semiconductor industry, and this work demonstrates IBM and its partners’ continued leadership in cutting-edge process technology. Key enablers of the SRAM cell include band edge high-K metal gate stacks, transistors with less than 25 nm gate lengths, thin spacers, novel co-implants, advanced activation techniques, extremely thin silicide, and damascene copper contacts…
IBM Builds World’s Smallest SRAM Memory Cell
IBM (NYSE: IBM) and its joint development partners — AMD, Freescale, STMicroelectronics, Toshiba and the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) — announced the first working static random access memory (SRAM) for the 22 nanometer (nm) technology node, the world’s first reported working cell built at its 300mm research facility in Albany, NY. SRAM chips are precursors to more complex devices such as microprocessors.