Carnegie Mellon Chemists Advance Organic Semiconductor Processing
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PITTSBURGH, June 27  /PRNewswire/ -- Any machinist will tell you that a little grease goes a long way toward making a tool work better. And that may soon hold true for plastic electronics as well.
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OLED or Organic LED is not made of semiconductors. It&#39;s made from carbon-based molecules. That is the key science factor that leads to potentially eliminating LEDs&#39; biggest drawback - size.
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IBM announced Tuesday that it has created a process allowing its manufacturing facilities to repurpose otherwise scrap semiconductor wafers.Since the silicon wafers need to be nearly flawless in order to be used in computers, mobile phones, video games, and other consumer electronics, the imperfect ones are normally erased with acidic chemicals and discarded. IBM had been sandblasting its castoffs&#160;to remove proprietary material. Some of the pieces, called &quot;monitors,&quot; are reused for test purposes.The new process cleans the silicon pieces with water and an abrasive pad, leaving them in better condition for reuse. The entire process to clean an 8-inch wafer is about one minute. Eric White, the inventor of the process, said that IBM can now get five or six monitor wafers out of one that would have been crushed and discarded. The cleaned wafers can also be sold to the solar-cell industry, which has a high demand for the silicon material to use in solar panels. White said that shortage would need to be &quot;extreme&quot; to use the wafers in consumer electronics and that IBM does not plan to do so.The IBM site in Burlington, Vt., has been using the process and reported an annual savings in 2006 of more than $500,000. Expansion of the new technique has begun at IBM&#39;s site in East Fishkill, N.Y., and 2007 savings estimates are more than $1.5 million. The Vermont and New York plants are IBM&#39;s only semiconductor manufacturing sites.Chris Voce, an analyst with Forrester Resarch, does not anticipate savings for the end-user, but added, &quot;When a semiconductor company can improve its process and drive efficiency into their manufacturing process, that&#39;s always great for their margins, but it&#39;s even better when there are broader benefits for the environment.&quot; Annually, IBM estimates that the semiconductor industry discards as many as 3 million wafers worldwide.IBM plans to patent the new process and provide details for the semiconductor manufacturing industry.
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Semiconductor chips that can manage a good bit of their own upkeep are moving closer to reality.
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U.S. chemists have identified the mechanism involved in biological catalysts called enzymes -- a finding that may improve synthetic catalyst design.
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Nanowires put more power in smaller packages, researcher reports.
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A University of Idaho professor is devising a new form of solar cell she says could lead to a breakthrough that would make solar energy commercially feasible.
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Researchers create three-dimensional structures using DNA-directed assembly.
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Developments in silicon carbide wafers may lead to a new world of fast, robust electronics.
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In an advance that could lead to lighter spacecraft and smarter cars, researchers have developed a new technique for producing a high-quality semiconductor that's much more resistant to extreme conditions than the silicon found in most of today's electronics.    Devices built with the rugged material would not require cooling and other protections that add size, weight and cost to traditional silicon electronics in power systems, jet engines, rockets, wireless transmitters and other equipment exposed to harsh environments...
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The Southeastern Pennsylvania section of the American Chemical Society will meet at 7 p.m. Feb 15 at Millersville University.        Maria Schiza of the MU faculty will speak about nanotechnology.    A dinner will be held at 6 p.m.
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Researchers have made analog electronics out of carbon nanotubes.
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Implemented using Texas Instruments&#39; 90 nanometer process technology, UltraSPARC IV+ will double the application throughput of the existing UltraSPARC IV through expanded caches and buffers, a better branch prediction mechanism, augmented prefetching
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In an advance that could lead to lighter spacecraft and smarter cars, researchers have developed a new technique for producing a high-quality semiconductor that&#39;s much more resistant to extreme conditions than the silicon found in most of today&#39;s
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Forcing a trio of incompatible molecules together yields multi-compartment nano containers.
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A new carbon-based nanoscale material could be used to make ultrafast computers.
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New nonsilicon transistors could be integrated into existing chip-making processes.