Items Tagged With Electronics

The FEI Company will expand its top-of-the-line Helios NanoLab(TM) family of DualBeams when it introduces the Helios NanoLab 400 and 400S systems next week at SEMICON Japan. Combining advanced focused ion beam (FIB) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) technologies in a highly-integrated and easy-to-use platform, the Helios NanoLab family of tools will provide semiconductor manufacturers with a complete range of advanced high-resolution solutions for their analytical labs.

The Finnish nanotechnology industry is booming unlike ever before. The number of Finnish companies involved in the nanotechnology sector has grown 111% in just a two-year period. Of these, 22% have a commercial product based on nanotechnology. Furthermore, this explosive growth is a signifier of trends demonstrating that nanotechnology offers new opportunities to both traditional and new industries in Finland. A large part of the overall rise in activity and awareness can be ascribed to Finland’s national nanotechnology programme, FinNano.

Imagine having computer memory so dense that a cubic centimetre contains 12.8 million gigabytes (GB) of information. Imagine an iPod™ playing music for 100 millennia without repeating a single song or a USB thumb-drive with room for 32.6 million full-length DVD movies. Now imagine if this could be achieved by combining a computing principle that was popular in the 1960s, a glass of water and wire 3 nm wide. Science fiction? Not exactly.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a prototype nanoscale electronic switch that works like lightning—except for the speed. Their proof-of-concept experiments reported last week* demonstrate that nanoscale electrical switches can be built from self-assembled layers of organic molecules on silver wires. Potential applications range from a replacement technology for magnetic data storage to integrated circuit memory devices.

Experts have been working for many years to understand how to work with electronic material produced on an increasingly small scale. In the emerging field of nanoscience and nanotechnologies it is important for scientists to be able to control the structure and bonding of molecules that are used in creating small scale electronic components for products such as computers.