RTAINST

Bigger (slower), smaller (faster)

2012-03-08T08:30:00.000Z

We may be seeing a human obesity epidemic in some parts of the world but according to a recent study on the evolutionary scale it is much quicker for animal species to decrease in size than grow in size. Apparently it takes about 24 million generations for a mouse sized animal to evolve into the size of an elephant. However a mere 100,000 generations are needed to reverse the process and achieve dwarfism. The differences may be explained by the evolutionary driving forces of smaller species requiring less food and being able to reproduce quicker.

Outnumbered

2012-03-06T08:30:00.001Z

The latest Global Data Traffic Forecast from Cisco says that this year the number of mobile connected devices ('phones, tablets etc) will exceed the world's population. They also predict that there will be over 10 billion mobile-connected devices in 2016, including machine-to-machine modules, greatly exceeding the world's population at that time (7.3 billion). Adding in the speed/quality benefits available from 4G technology the rise in data consumption is likely to cause more problems for mobile operators already struggling to cope with demand. Although 4G connections represent only 0.2 percent of mobile connections today, they already account for 6 percent of mobile data traffic. CISCO think that global mobile traffic will increase 18-fold between 2011 and 2016.

Could be slower (or faster)

2012-03-01T08:30:00.000Z

Many in the scientific press have decided that the potentially theory busting neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light are no more. The primary culprit being the timing system. However the recent press release from CERN and the OPERA group could be interpreted as a wonderful mix of honesty confusion and damage limitation. The groups have informed funding agencies that it has identified two possible effects that could have an influence on its neutrino timing measurement. One of them, due to a possible faulty connection in the fibre-optic cable carrying the GPS signals between Switzerland and Italy, would have caused the experiment to underestimate the neutrinos' flight time, thus negating the faster than light claim. The other effect concerns an oscillator in OPERA's particle detector that gives its readings' time stamps synchronized to GPS signals. Researchers think correcting for an error in this device would actually increase the anomaly in neutrino velocity, making the particles even speedier than the earlier measurements seemed to show.

The potential extent of these two effects is being studied with further experiments scheduled for May.

"XPS Simplified" webinar – Understanding Metal Surfaces and Oxides: February 22, 2012

2012-02-15T11:46:00.003Z

Thermo Scientific's latest surface analysis webinar covers the basics of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, with a special emphasis on how it can be used in the field of metal and oxide analysis. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is a powerful technique for the chemical analysis of the surface of materials.
Date: February 22, 2012
Time:
Session 1 - 2:00pm (GMT)
Session 2 - 6:00pm (GMT)
Duration: 1 hour

Requiring little or no sample preparation and with the ability to directly quantify all elements except hydrogen and helium, XPS delivers chemical state information from the topmost few nanometers of the surface of a sample. Modern instruments, such as the Thermo Scientific K-Alpha, can extend analyses into chemical images of the surface, or reveal the composition of buried interfaces using depth profiling. These strengths allow scientists and engineers to measure passivation coatings, understand catalyst chemistries and develop bio-compatible coatings.

Register now for this webinar.

Seeing beef in a new light

2012-02-14T08:30:00.000Z

The use of LEDs to save electricity is well known, but work within the US meat industry has thrown up extra advantages. The use of LEDs in refrigeration display cabinets has been shown to extend the shelf life of some beef products. The propensity of customers to discriminate against natural oxidation related meat coloration changes is a key factor in defining the shelf life of fresh meat. Scoring LED lighting against the normal fluorescent in the areas of preferred colour, taste and operating costs showed several advantages in using LEDs.

Eastern expansion

2012-02-10T08:30:00.001Z

Continued confidence and growth in the far east semiconductor sector has been emphasised this month with AXT announcing further expansion of its compound semiconductor substrate manufacturing facilities in China. On a larger scale, it is reported that Samsung is increasing its 2012 investments to $41 Billion. The money will be used for everything from building factories to R&D, as well as mergers & acquisitions and hiring new staff. Samsung expects to take on around 26,000 new staff in 2012, taking its global total to about 376,000. The company has not specified the R&D development areas but analysts widely expect it to raise investment in mobile chips for phones, tablets and digital cameras and to accelerate the production of next-generation OLED (organic light emitting diode) flat-screen displays.

12 = 1 (or 0)

2012-02-07T08:30:00.001Z

IBM scientists have used a scanning tunnelling microscope to make a magnetic storage device from only twelve atoms. By using antiferromagnetism to limit external magnetic fields, the IBM group have been able to encode a bit of data in just 12 iron atoms. They then placed eight of the 12-atom bits side by side creating a byte of data made of 96 atoms. Because no magnetic field strayed from each cluster of 12 atoms, the bits could be placed very close, creating a byte 100 times as dense as those typically used in today's hard drives. Apparently using less than twelve atoms is a problem. Smaller numbers of atoms are too unstable to act as bits, without neighbours to interact with and stabilise them, the atoms behaved like quantum objects that existed in multiple spin states at once.

An enterprising $10m

2012-02-03T08:30:00.002Z

First seen in 1966, Dr McCoy's tricorder was a regular Star Trek gadget used to diagnose illnesses by scanning a body. A prize is now on offer for such a device. The Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE is a $10 million global competition to stimulate innovation and integration of precision diagnostic technologies, making reliable health diagnoses available directly to people in their homes. The winning device will be a tool capable of capturing key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 diseases. Metrics for health could include such elements as blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature. Ultimately, this tool will collect large volumes of data from ongoing measurement of health states through a combination of wireless sensors, imaging technologies and portable, non-invasive laboratory replacements. I might be suspicious if the prize is won by Vulcan Healthcare Developments Inc.

IUPAP Prize

2012-01-30T08:30:00.000Z

The International Union of Pure & Applied Physics (IUPAP) is seeking nominations for its 2012 Young Scientist Prize in Physics of Semiconductors. The IUPAP C8 Young Scientist Prize recognizes exceptional achievement in the study of semiconductor physics by scientists at a relatively junior stage of their career. Two prizes will be awarded in 2012. The recipient must be no more than eight years post PhD (excluding career interruptions) and is expected to have displayed significant achievement and exceptional promise for future achievement in an area of semiconductor physics. Further details are available via this link.

RTA celebrates 10 years of trading!

2012-01-27T08:30:00.002Z

In January 2002 we issued our first invoice, number 2002/01. We started trading as Richard Thomson Associates and our early customers engaged us for sales market consultancy, sales service provision and customer satisfaction surveys - areas of our strong expertise.

Huawei completes acquisition of CIP Technologies

2012-01-25T14:11:00.000Z

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, today announced the acquisition of the Centre for Integrated Photonics Ltd (CIP), a world-leading photonics research laboratory, from the East of England Development Agency (EEDA).

CIP will significantly deepen the optical research and development (R&D) capabilities of Huawei and demonstrates the company’s ongoing commitment to R&D in the UK. The CIP R&D team, which is located in Ipswich, will be retained by Huawei and will form the core of the new Huawei UK R&D centre, part of Huawei’s global R&D network.

CIP has a reputation as a world-class incubator in fibre optic transmission and carries out world-leading cutting edge research work in this hi tech area. Huawei will continue to invest in fibre optic R&D to ensure that CIP remains an innovator in this important technology sector.

Sensorable garments?

2012-01-24T08:30:00.000Z

A group of researchers in the US, Italy, and France have made transistors made from cotton fibres. The cellulose that makes up cotton is naturally insulating, so to make a fibre conductive, the team coated each strand with gold nanoparticles. Polymers such as pentacene and PEDOT are used to provide the dielectric and semiconducting properties. The team considers that the most realistic application areas reside with sensors. For example, fire-fighter's uniforms might be able to detect dangerous chemicals, while security personnel could be alerted to airborne signatures of explosives or drugs.

Building blocks of matter

2012-01-17T08:30:00.001Z

It is good to know that the best brains of Europe are on the case at CERN. Fundamental physics and high speed neutrinos are one thing but a scale model of the LHC ATLAS detector made out of LEGO has to take precedent. The real ATLAS project is 44 metres long and 22 metres wide and weighs 7,000 tonnes. Mehlhase’s model at approximately 1:50 scale is approximately 1 metre long by a half metre wide. The real ATLAS has millions of parts, the model has 9,500 pieces, mostly LEGO blocks. I know that it is not easy looking for elusive particles such as the Higgs Boson but is the ATLAS experiment that boring?

iTV for 2012?

2012-01-11T08:30:00.000Z

The rumours keep coming. There has been speculation for several years that Apple would move into selling televisions, but the slow sales of its Apple TV boxes suggested that the company didn't see this as a priority. Steve Jobs, Apple's late chief executive, told his biographer that he had "cracked" the problem of building a television. Not surprisingly when this comment appeared in his biography published shortly after his death, rumours of an Apple TV intensified. Last week, Taiwan sources reported that Apple was going down the route of the iTV with 32 inch and 37 inch screens from Sharp and chips from Samsung. Previous reports have suggested that Apple's TV set would have voice control using Siri, the voice controlled personal assistant used in the iPhone 4S. The industry is very keen to ascertain what Apple could have as a surprise package. What could they do with the humble TV to make the iTV a must-have product alongside its MP3 players, smartphones and tablets?

Low cost tablets

2012-01-09T08:30:00.000Z

The digital divide between India and the West will be eliminated quicker than five years, if a recent report in the Times of India is anything to go by. Sales bookings for the Aakash tablet soared to 1.4 million units just two weeks after it was put on sale for Rs 2500 ($45). To cater for the demand, the UK-based vendor Datawind will establish three new factories, in Cochin, Noida and Hyderabad, in the first half of 2012 to assemble the tablet, giving a total output of 70,000 units per day by April. The Aakash is an computer tablet jointly developed by Datawind and the Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan. The 7-inch touch screen tablet features 256 MB RAM, uses an ARM processor with the Android 2.2 operating system, has two USB ports and delivers HD-quality video.

IBM and EE Times predict

2012-01-05T08:30:00.001Z

The end of one year and the start of another always brings out a series of gurus and soothsayers foretelling the future. Many are quite rightly forgotten by mid February, but the guys at IBM and EE Times probably deserve a hearing more than most. IBM have revealed five innovations that they expect to change our lives within five years. Briefly they encompass: Capturing and recycling energy from anything that moves; using biometrics security to safeguard access to information; linking human brain activities to control and activate electronic systems; the end of the digital divide and smarter, personalised priority e-mail. EE Times have produced their list of 20 hot technologies for 2012, it includes MEMS, plastic electronics, graphene, EUV lithography and 3D ICs.

Time for a (completely) new calendar?

2012-01-03T08:30:00.001Z

We put a new calendar on the kitchen wall in the Grange household every January 1st. This year it has pictures of old railway advertising posters on it. A group at the Johns Hopkins University want to change things a bit more radically. The current Gregorian calendar has been in place since 1582, when Pope Gregory altered a calendar that was instituted in 46 BC by Julius Caesar. The JHU team wish to create a new calendar in which each new 12-month period is identical to the one which came before, and remains that way from one year to the next in perpetuity. Under the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, if Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2012 it will also fall on a Sunday in 2013, 2014 and beyond. Under the new calendar, September has 31 days, as does June, March and December, the remaining months have 30 days. The advocates suggest that the benefits of such a calendar are many, including the stability which allows the permanent, rational planning of annual activities, from school to work holidays along with simplified financial calculations such as mortgage interest calculations. And they also encourage the abolition of world time zones and the adoption of “Universal Time” in order to synchronize dates and times worldwide, streamlining international business.

ET gone home?

2011-12-21T08:30:00.002Z

One petition to the US government recently boldly asserted that more than 50 percent of the American people believe there is an extraterrestrial presence and more than 80 percent believe the government is not telling the truth about this phenomenon. Sadly for the conspiracy theorists the White House has officially responded in the negative. According to the White House Office dealing with Science & Technology policy: "The US government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye". But they do note that doesn't mean the subject of life outside our planet isn't being discussed or explored. In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth. Are they implying that Star Trek is untrue?

Engineering royally acknowledged

2011-12-19T08:30:00.001Z

The Royal Academy of Engineering has announced the creation of The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. A new global award which celebrates truly outstanding advances in engineering that have created significant benefit to humanity. The £1 million Prize will be awarded in the name of Her Majesty The Queen to an individual or a team of up to three people, of any nationality, directly responsible for advancing the positive application of engineering knowledge. The Prize will be international and will be awarded biennially, the first being presented in Spring 2013. Nominations will be sought in early 2012 from appropriate organisations worldwide, including engineering and science academies, universities, research organisations and companies. In looking for the winners, the judging panel will be seeking outstanding engineering-led advances that have produced tangible and widespread public benefit.

Lightweights at Caltech

2011-12-16T08:30:00.000Z

A team of researchers from UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology have developed the world's lightest material - with a density of 0.9 mg/cc - about 100 times lighter than Styrofoam. The new material, which is 99.99% air, is formed of hollow nickel/phosphorus tubes arranged into a micro-lattice cellular architecture. Developed for the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, the novel material could be used for battery electrodes and acoustic, vibration or shock energy absorption.

And then there was ...

2011-12-14T08:30:00.001Z

A group of physicists working at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, have succeeded in proving that visible photons can be produced from the virtual particles that have been thought to exist in a quantum vacuum. The experiment is based on one of the most counterintuitive, yet, one of the most important principles in quantum mechanics: that vacuum is by no means empty nothingness; it teems with virtual particles flitting in and out of existence. Using the vibrational speeds associated with a superconducting quantum interference device to enact the dynamical Casmir effect the team was able to convert the virtual photons into real ones. Almost magical.

Speedy Intel

2011-12-12T08:30:00.002Z

The SC11, supercomputer conference, in Seattle saw Intel show off an accelerator chip on a test machine capable of speeds of one teraflop, equal to one trillion calculations per second. The chip packs 50 individual processors into one unit. Not quite faster than light or neutrino speeds but still fairly quick.

Icarus flies to the rescue?

2011-12-09T08:30:00.000Z

It was looking a bit bleak for Mr Einstein. The OPERA group at Gran Sasso laboratory had reviewed and refined their September observations and reported that the CERN neutrinos were still travelling faster than the speed of light. However a further experiment, also at Gran Sasso, called ICARUS captured some of the neutrinos and measured their energy rather than journey time. According to theory, any neutrinos that were at superluminal velocity would have to be emitting radiation and thus losing energy. The ICARUS group found no evidence of radiation as the neutrinos arrived with the same energy as they left. The inference thus being that they cannot have been travelling faster that light.

Gioachino Rossini wrote Italian comic operas, however I don't recall one about flying Greeks. But as has often been said about Brünnhilde's final aria from Götterdämmerung, it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings. There is more to come.

Top Innovators

2011-12-07T08:30:00.000Z

Thomson Reuters has announced the world's 100 most innovative organisations. The ranking methodology they used to identify innovative organisations is based on four principle criteria: Patent approval success rate, global reach of patent portfolio, patent influence in literature citations and overall patent volume. The US continues to lead this list and Asia and Europe are placed second and third, respectively. There are no completely UK organisations on the list. China is not yet ranked because of its practices regarding protecting IP and commercialising products globally. Whilst the US dominates in the semiconductor and electronics areas, Asia in the computer hardware sector and Europe in machinery manufacture it is interesting to note the position of France. It leads the world in scientific research and is the European nation with the most companies represented in the list.

Three in a row

2011-12-05T08:30:00.001Z

We are pleased to announce the third K-Alpha XPS system sale in the UK this year, to a well-known industrial group with significant experience in XPS. The K-Alpha proved the match of all our competition, commented Richard Thomson, RTA Instruments Director. We ticked all the boxes with an exceptional solution for high quality, high-throughput, low-cost sample analysis. Intuitive workflows allow multiple operators to quickly master high quality XPS data acquisition, interpretation and reporting. In the UK we now have coverage of all XPS user categories: first time industrial users; first time academic users; experienced industrial users and experienced academic users.

"May you live in interesting times"

2011-12-02T08:30:00.000Z

"May you live in interesting times" is an often used phrase and alluded by many to be some ancient Chinese curse. Regrettably, facts frequently get in the way of a good story. The phrase actually appears to be of early 20th century western origin with Robert Kennedy bringing it to prominence in a speech in South Africa in 1966. Whatever the exact origination, it seems fair to say that we are living in challenging and interesting times. Current fiscal matters coupled with the interlocking nature of the global economies has already, and could further, adversely impact many of us. I have neither the ability, nor desire, to attempt to solve the world recession and the plight of the Euro currency in this newsletter. However, in searching for solutions and avoiding repeating past mistakes, I do advocate that more use is made of scientific thinking. The banking fraternity could do well to consider Occam's Razor (simple explanations are, other things being equal, generally better than complex ones). If you cannot explain sub-prime derivative products to your grandmother, think again. Isaac Newton knew a bit about money, he was created Master of the Mint in 1699. His first law of motion should be explained to EU leaders; things only change if you take some positive action otherwise they just carry on.

Perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel. Lucas Papademos, Greece's new Prime Minister, is an MIT alumnus with a bachelor’s degree in physics, a master’s degree in electrical engineering as well as a doctorate in economics. Just don't let the latter drag you down Lucas.

Thinking man's (or woman's) car

2011-11-30T08:30:00.000Z

'I think therefore I park' could be the strap line for a future Nissan car if work with Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland comes to fruition. Research on Brain Machine Interface (BMI) systems at EPFL already allows disabled users to manoeuvre their wheelchairs by thought transference alone. The next stage is to adapt the BMI processes to the car, and driver, of the future. Using brain activity measurement, eye movement patterns and by scanning the environment around the car in conjunction with the car’s own sensors, EPFL and Nissan aim to have the car predict what the driver plans to do and then assist with the manoeuvre in complete safety. Will anyone then fail the driving test?

imec HBT

2011-11-28T08:30:00.000Z

Belgium based research consortium Imec has developed a heterojunction bipolar transistor device with peak f(max) values above 450GHz as a key enabler for millimetre-wave low-power circuits to be used in automotive radar applications. Imec used a silicon-germanium: carbon heterojunction bipolar transistor process technology which improves device performance by adding small amounts of germanium and carbon to the silicon transistor base. Compared to III-V HBT devices, SiGe:C HBTs combine high-density and low-cost integration, making them more suitable for consumer applications.

Laser light bulbs?

2011-11-25T08:30:00.000Z

Recent work at Sandia Laboratories may lead to a review on the use of lasers as well as LEDs for higher amperage illumination applications because of human preferences. Volunteers were show a test-box scene illuminated via different light sources. Tests showed that there was a statistically significant preference for the diode-laser-based white light over the warm and cool LED-based white light, but no statistically significant preference between the diode-laser-based and either the neutral LED-based or incandescent white light.

Pending material shortages?

2011-11-23T08:30:00.003Z

A Geological Society meeting recently discussed the issues surrounding the shortages of minerals. The shortage of rare-earth elements over the past year being a case in point. China, responsible for more than 90% of the world's supply of these elements, prioritized its own economy's demand and started to limit export and worldwide disruptions ensued. Interestingly the EU has drawn up a list of fourteen economically important raw materials that are subject to a higher risk of supply interruption. As well as the rare earth elements the list includes Ge, In, Ga, Sb, Ta, and Be. The EU will be monitoring material availability and discussing actions as required.

The geologists do have concerns over the limits to material availability but this stems not so much from the fear that resources will run out. The so called "peak metal", the anticipated turning point from globally increasing to decreasing production when minable deposits become scarce, is not yet in their view on the horizon. The bigger issues being demand surges coming up against political/monopolistic actions by governments or companies thus causing bottlenecks and shortages. Building more mines is one approach but the social and environmental consequences are non-trivial.

And on Caltech

2011-11-21T08:30:00.000Z

The Times Higher Education has published its World University Rankings for 2011-12 and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) tops the list in the engineering and technology sector, followed by Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities. The ranking methodology is based on assessing thirteen performance indicators across five areas: Teaching; Research; Citations; Industry income and International outlook. The rankings for physical sciences will be published later this year.

The sun shines on Tokai

2011-11-17T08:30:00.000Z

The Tokai University Solar Car Team was the first to cross the line in the 2011 World Solar Challenge held in Australia. The competition is for electric vehicles and the winner is the first to cover the 3,000km between Darwin and Adelaide. A major feature of the challenge being the efficiency based on energy management. The solar cars are allowed a nominal 5kW hours of stored energy and all other energy must come from the sun or be recovered from the kinetic energy of the vehicle. The Tokai team left Darwin on 16th October and arrived at the finishing line four days later with a total drive time of 32.75 hours and an average speed of 91.54 km/hour. Of the thirty seven starters only seven completed the full journey. Confirmation of the result apparently awaits a review as one team has lodged a protest.

Newton, Franklyn and a dead student

2011-11-16T21:05:00.000Z

The Royal Society has announced that its historical journal archive has been made permanently free to access online. Around 60000 historical scientific papers are available to be searched with those over 70 years old being freely available. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society appeared in 1665 as the first peer reviewed journal. The archives include Newton's first paper (1672) on the colour properties of light; Franklyn's famous 1752 paper on safely using a kite to investigate the properties of lightning and the slightly less well known 1665 paper by a Dr Wallis describing the death and subsequent post mortem of a student struck by lightning whilst boating in a thunder storm. One trusts he was an arts graduate.

3rd K-Alpha this year

2011-11-14T08:30:00.003Z

We are pleased to announce the third K-Alpha XPS sale in the UK this year, to a well-known industrial group with significant experience in XPS. The K-Alpha proved the match of all our competition, commented Richard Thomson, RTA Instruments Director. We ticked all the boxes with a high specification product that is also suitable for a multi-user environment.

The sun, the moon and the truth

2011-11-11T08:30:00.000Z

According to Buddha, three things cannot be long hidden - the sun, the moon and the truth. Someone should try telling that to the unnamed Texan actor who has filed a $1 million lawsuit against a show business database for revealing her true age. Unfortunately, as Oscar Wilde noted, the truth is rarely pure and never simple. Neither Buddha nor Oscar Wilde had to cope with the internet and the rapid electronic dissemination of everything from truths and honest opinions to malicious spite and lies. The electronic blog age enables one, frequently anonymously, not only to enquire, inform and comment but also to slur and defame individuals and organisations. This non-trivial matter is being reviewed by the UK parliament and a Draft Deformation Bill (First Report) has been published. It recommends that where complaints are made about comments from identified authors the website should promptly publish a notice of the complaint alongside it. The complainant can then apply to a court for a "takedown" order which if granted, should result in the comment being removed, if the website is to avoid the risk of a defamation claim. However where potentially defamatory comments are anonymous, the website should immediately remove them on receipt of a complaint, unless the author agrees to identify themselves.

Whilst the above have already raised issues of freedom of speech, it is interesting to note that the parliamentarians also clearly state that scientists and academics must not be left in fear of being sued simply for doing their job. They recommend that the legislation extends qualified privilege to peer reviewed articles in scientific or academic journals. The reviewers quote the historic examples of the safety of smoking and the risks associated with a drug such as Thalidomide, where the truth eventually emerged only following persistent and impartial research. They note that a process of critical review is essential with work being published and subsequently challenged by others. Furthermore, the committee says that there is convincing evidence that defamation law is being used to silence members of the medical and scientific community in order to protect products and profits. They felt that it is unavoidable that efforts to uncover the truth and expand the limits of our understanding may sometimes turn out to be wrong or to clash with the commercial and personal interests of other individuals and corporate organisations.

Whilst ultimately these things have to be decided in a court, it will be very interesting to see the eventual guidance given to the judiciary concerning deciding which "peer review articles" or "scientific or academic conference" are appropriate for qualified privilege.

kSA 400 Users - Win an iPad 2!

2011-11-09T08:30:00.003Z

If you are a current kSA400 user, we would like to solicit your help again in adding to our RHEED image and movie database for the benefit of all users. The goal of this library is for you to have reference RHEED images and movies, with embedded description, available within the kSA400 software and at your fingertips. For more information, click this link.

k-Space Newsletter Fall 2011

2011-11-08T08:30:00.001Z

The latest newsletter from k-Space Associates features "k-Space is Expanding --- AGAIN!"; "k-Space Wins Phase II SBIR for In-Situ Monitoring During HgCdTe MBE Growth"; "New! kSA 400 Version 5.0 Software Now Available".

A kilogram of graphene?

2011-11-03T08:30:00.000Z

Research at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) using graphene is underpinning a big change to the SI system of units. The goal being to relate all of the unit definitions to fundamental constants of nature. One of the key units to be redefined is the kilogram, currently defined by a physical lump of platinum-iridium. The other is the ampere. The goal is to define the kilogram in terms the Planck constant, h, and the ampere in terms of the electron charge, e. The Quantum Hall effect defines a relationship between h and e and is therefore key in any 'quantum-based' redefinition of mass and current. Experiments tested the quantum Hall effect in different materials in order to prove whether or not it is truly universal. NPL compared the quantum Hall effect in graphene with that observed in GaAs/AlGaAs and confirmed that the quantum Hall effect is truly universal with an uncertainty level of several parts in 1011, thus supporting the quantum based redefinition of both the kilogram and ampere.

The full paper is available this link.

Noble efforts

2011-11-01T08:30:00.002Z

Last week saw the annual presentation of the 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes. As always this is a fascinating event and two prizes were of particular note this year: 1) Peace Prize: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armoured tank. 2) Mathematics Prize: Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of Korea (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of Uganda (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on October 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations. Jobs at CERN beckon?

PVD Products PLD/MBE Systems

2011-10-27T08:30:00.000+01:00

A new video from PVD Products, Inc. our partner in pulsed laser deposition systems has just been launched on YouTube. Take a look and see why customers choose this system, which RTA installs and supports in Europe.

Q3 results for Thermo Fisher Scientific

2011-10-26T19:00:00.003+01:00

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE: TMO), the world leader in serving science, today reported its financial results for the third quarter ended October 1, 2011. Highlights include revenue growth of 13% to a record $2.97 billion and adjusted operating margin increased 120 basis points to 18.4%. RTA is of course pleased to have contributed its small part!

Not a flash in the pan?

2011-10-25T08:30:00.000+01:00

Research group Gartner expect the 2011 market for worldwide ICs to decline slightly compared with 2010. Demand for DRAM memory being impacted by the reduced demand for PCs. However the growing demand for smartphones and iPads is fuelling the 20% growth for NAND flash memory devices. A week following the Gartner report, Samsung announced the operation of the world's largest NAND flash memory line. Located in Korea and housed in a twelve story building, Samsung started construction in May last year and the operating line is capable of producing over 10,000 12-inch wafers per month.

44,300,000 is a big number

2011-10-20T08:30:00.000+01:00

Research and analysis by Strategy Analytics says that the recovery of the GaAs industry continued throughout 2010, resulting in a 26% increase in demand for semi-insulating (SI) GaAs substrates. They estimate that 2010 saw the consumption of nearly 30,000,000 square inches of SI GaAs substrates. The market research firm predicts that the total SI GaAs substrate market will grow at a compound annual average growth rate of 6% to more than 44,300,000 square inches in 2015.

GaN HEMTs

2011-10-18T08:30:00.000+01:00

Researchers from ETH Zurich and CNRS France have used MBE to fabricate and RF analyse AlGaN/GaN HEMTs grown on (110) silicon substrates. Cut-off frequencies of 70GHz were measured.

The full text is available at this link.

To replace the transistor

2011-10-13T08:30:00.001+01:00

Semiconductor Research Corp (SEC), a US university-research consortium, and the National Science Foundation, the US government agency supporting fundamental research, are funding 12 nanoelectronics research grants to $20 million. The interdisciplinary research teams at 24 participating US universities are funded to find a nanoelectronic switching mechanism as a replacement for the transistor. The Nanoelectronics for 2020 and Beyond programme involves several IC manufacturing companies including Globalfoundries, IBM, Intel, Micron Technology and Texas Instruments. The Nanoelectronics Research Initiative within SEC has a goal of demonstrating the feasibility of novel computing devices in simple computer circuits within the next five to ten years.

Details of the funded projects are available at this link.

Thinking the unthinkable

2011-10-11T08:30:00.002+01:00

We await the outcome of further work and data reviews as to whether neutrinos actually do cover the 732 km from CERN in Switzerland to Gran Sasso in Italy faster than the speed of light. It is difficult to fully comprehend the implications of these findings for the Special Theory of Relativity, but a large number of text books would need serious changes. Whilst history shows that nobody is infallible, betting against Einstein is not usually a good idea and many scientists remain sceptical. In 2007, MINOS scientists at the Fermilab also clocked neutrinos apparently moving faster than the speed of light, but the margin of error for that experiment was far greater than what was reported at CERN. Bad news travels fast, but perhaps Professor Close (Oxford University) is right to note that "the only thing that travels faster than light is a rumour."

NEXUS invests in Thermo Scientific XPS

2011-10-06T08:30:00.001+01:00

The National EPSRC XPS-User’s Service, NEXUS, based at Newcastle University has invested in two high performance XPS systems from Thermo Scientific, the Theta Probe and the K-Alpha. In addition to supplying high quality instrumentation, both Thermo and RTA are supporting the facility with advanced applications and operator training, annual XPS Workshops and regular site visits to review operations and answer user questions.

The K-Alpha is being installed this week and will be available to users shortly afterwards.

Nudge Theory

2011-10-04T08:30:00.002+01:00

Most of us need to influence the behaviour of other people at some time and adopt various approaches in order to achieve the outcomes we desire. Do we expect others to agree and follow us because we tell them; or do we expect their rational thought processes to naturally arrive at the same conclusion as ourselves? How do you manage to get someone to stop smoking or invest in blue sky research? This month has seen much comment both in the US and UK about the use of Thaler & Sunstein's Nudge Theory within political circles and its social and economic impact. Without getting lost in the "libertarian paternalism" debate, nudging involves presenting choices in a certain way. The key is in arranging the choice architecture so that individuals can be nudged in a certain way without taking away their freedom of choice.

Like many in the 1970s I was enthralled by the insane humour of Monty Python's Flying Circus and know that this resonated in other countries too, including Germany (see below). They had a rather different and perhaps less advisable take on nudging. In uncertain times it is good to laugh.

R&D Awards 2012

2011-09-29T08:30:00.001+01:00

The September issue of R&D magazine will profile the top innovations selected for 2011 R&D 100 Awards. However, nominations are now open for the 2012 R&D 100 Awards with the deadline being March 16, 2012.

Atoms move just a little bit

2011-09-27T08:30:00.001+01:00

An international team based at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble studying multiferroic materials using an X-ray interference scattering technique, have set a world record for accuracy in absolute measurements of atomic displacements. The experimental technique exploits the interference between charge and magnetic scattering of a polarised X-ray beam. Studying a single crystal of TbMnO3 they measured the displacement of specific atoms with an accuracy approaching one femtometre (10E-15m).

Anti-creativity bias

2011-09-22T08:30:00.005+01:00

A study to shortly be published in the journal Psychological Science reveals that most people view creativity as an asset until they come across a creative idea. That’s because creativity not only reveals new perspectives, it promotes a sense of uncertainty. The study will reveal: Creative ideas are by definition novel, and novelty can trigger feelings of uncertainty that make most people uncomfortable; People dismiss creative ideas in favour of ideas that are purely practical; Objective evidence shoring up the validity of a creative proposal does not motivate people to accept it; Anti-creativity bias is so subtle that people are unaware of it, which can interfere with their ability to recognize a creative idea.

To quote one of the authors: “Revealing the existence and nature of a bias against creativity can help explain why people might reject creative ideas and stifle scientific advancements, even in the face of strong intentions to the contrary.”

What goes up.....

2011-09-20T08:30:00.002+01:00

There is no easy way to defy Newtonian mechanics and gravity, even in North Africa. Whilst not wishing to dampen any freedom related joy of the Libyan people, they might want to note that celebratory firing of guns into the air is not without risk. One study found that 118 people were treated for random "falling-bullet injuries" at one Los Angeles medical centre between 1985 and 1992, resulting in 38 deaths. Apparently 0.30 calibre rounds can reach terminal velocities of 300 feet (91m) per second as they fall and that 200 feet (61m) per second is enough to penetrate the skull.

New route to 3D ICs

2011-09-15T08:30:00.004+01:00

It has been generally accepted that 3-dimensional ICs are the way forward. However severe challenges have been presented in developing production technologies using either multilayer growth with suitable interconnect techniques or TSVs (through silicon vias). At the recent Semicon West event a third way was proposed by MonolithicIC 3D. They suggest an approach based on the technology Soitec use for making SOI wafers whereby active layers are stacked on top of each other. For full details see the article.

Korean schools save trees

2011-09-13T08:30:00.003+01:00

As you can now access your favourite read on a range of electronic devices - from Kindles to computers, iPods, iPhones, iPads and BlackBerrys - it is not surprising to note that Amazon is now selling 105 digital e-books for every 100 printed versions (both hardback and paperback forms). In a bold move the South Korean ministry of education has announced a plan to digitize all textbooks which are in use in Korean schools and thus completely phase out printed materials by 2015. Additionally the creation of a cloud computing network will allow students to access digital textbooks and store their homework so it can be accessed via any internet-connected device. Will Amazon and the like be selling e-homework download answer packages?

Cook to avoid Apple crumble?

2011-09-07T08:30:00.000+01:00

Last month Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple Inc to be replaced by Tim Cook. Sadly, recent photographs have indicated the fragility of Mr Jobs' health. Love him or hate him, there is no denying the impact upon the world of Apple's products under his guidance and the debate has already started as to his place in history. Inevitably things will now change and it will be interesting to see if Steve Jobs is correct in predicting that Apple's brightest and innovative days are ahead of it.

Granny's better forecast?

2011-09-05T08:30:00.003+01:00

Our Newsletter Editor has just returned from a family vacation in sunny south Wales. a region not generally noted for its sunshine. However he was intrigued and perplexed by the weather forecasts whilst he was there. He admits to being totally non-scientific and un-quantifiable in this comment, but they were rubbish. The inability to correctly predict the weather on a 12 - 18 hour time frame was mind boggling. Fortunately the predicted rain and cloud was in reality sunshine but people other than tourists should be reliant on more accurate information. We gather that the UK Met Office has a 1.2MW IBM supercomputer that can do 100 trillion calculations per second (as well as generating over 1,000 tonnes of CO2 per year). It has recently requested funding for changes to improve its forecasting accuracies. Our Editor's grandmother used to forecast the weather based on the position of cows in the adjacent field and the good people of Punxsutawney put faith in the groundhogs. He proposes a research project for the good folk at his alma mater, the University of Wales: Sheep behaviour as a predictor of climatic events. We wonder if the Met Office IT department were also thinking that some extra ram would improve matters?

Billion Dollar Brain, Gone with the Wand

2011-08-25T08:30:00.001+01:00

Having just seen Lord Voledemort cast his last spell and as the latest Harry Potter film approaches the $1billion global box office figure, I am marvelling at the ability of computer-generated imagery (cgi). For film geeks, the cgi filled movie Avatar is the worldwide box office biggest hit with takings of $2.7billion. A 3D virtual cgi Apple Store.......now there's an idea?

Even more 'phones

2011-08-23T08:30:00.002+01:00

The latest IDC report covers the period April - June 2011 and states that vendors shipped 365.4 million mobile phone units worldwide compared to 328.4 million in the same period last year. The growth is due to the increasing number of smartphones being purchased whilst the simpler and more basic "feature phone" market actually shrank 4% in the last twelve months. This decline being most prominent in the United States, Japan, and Western Europe, as users rapidly transition to smartphones. The shrinking feature phone market is having a significant impact on some of the world’s largest suppliers as they increasingly lose share in this market to low-cost suppliers such as Micromax, TCL-Alcatel, and Huawei. Nokia being particularly badly hit.

Even more LEDs

2011-08-18T08:30:00.001+01:00

Barely a month goes by without further evidence of the rapid growth in LED related areas. This month is no exception with figures showing the impact of the National Semiconductor Illuminating Project in China. In 2010, the growth of AlGaInP/AlGaAs/GaAsP/GaP epitaxial wafers, mainly used in red light LED products, accounted for 60.2% of the total epitaxial wafer output. Driven by the rapidly expanding markets for blue and white light LEDs in landscape lighting and backlighting, the GaN epitaxial wafer output accounted for 39.8% of China’s total epitaxial wafer output in 2010. However it is expected that the GaN epitaxial wafer output will exceed that of AlGaInP in 2011. No wonder that Aixtron believe that there is a market for a 16 x 4 inch or 69 x 2 inch MOCVD reactor.

Dim up North

2011-08-16T08:30:00.001+01:00

A group at Oxford University have studied the eye sockets and brain capacity of human skulls from 12 different populations across the world and found that the further human populations live from the equator, the bigger their brains. The skulls used in the study dated back to the 1800s and included samples from England, Australia, Canary Islands, China, France, India, Kenya, Micronesia, Scandinavia, Somalia, Uganda and the United States. However, this does not unfortunately mean that us northerners are smarter. Apparently our ancestors developed bigger vision areas in the brain to cope with the low light levels at high latitudes. Living away from the equator, where there is less light available, humans had to evolve bigger eyes, their brains also need to be bigger to deal with the extra visual input.

Apples or Chinese Gooseberries?

2011-08-08T08:30:00.001+01:00

They do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In which case Mr Jobs should be well pleased, but I guess that he is not. The news that several fake Apple Stores have been operating in China is quite amazing with some staff convinced that they actually worked for Apple. Several have now been closed and it is unclear whether all the stores only sold genuine Apple products or not. Perhaps shoppers should have tried to pay with fake money. On a separate issue it was interesting to note that on Friday of last week, Apple seemed to have more cash to spend than the US government. Perhaps some of it needs to be used to increase their manufacturing capacities. Apparently Apple sold 9.25 million iPads in the last three months but it could have sold more if it could only have made them.

EPSRC delivery plan for 2011 onwards

2011-08-02T10:45:00.000+01:00

We all have at times a tendency to be cynical and find it easier to criticise and knock ideas down rather than develop and build them up. Equally, bitter experience can lead us towards supporting such phrases as "the devil is in the detail" or "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". However, on first reading, I am greatly impressed with the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) delivery plan for 2011 onwards. EPSRC is the main UK government agency for funding research and training in engineering and the physical sciences, investing more than £850 million a year and at any one time supporting a £2-3 billion portfolio of research and training.

Economic realities have undoubtedly been a driving force within the strategic plan, however there is much more to it than merely cost cutting. Many of the ideas and methodologies therein are widely relevant and applicable. The strategic aim being to align the EPSRC portfolio of activities to areas of UK strength and national importance. Maintaining the UK's global research standing in light of increasing international competition, and with limited funding, requires tough decisions and changes. The EPSRC is changing, it is in transition from being a funder of research and training to a sponsor, where investments act as a strategic resource focused on outcomes for the national good. All these higher level strategic concepts and goals can sound grandiose, however the EPSRC do seem to have the action plans that will deliver the end results. I was particularly pleased to see an emphasis on two points:

a) The focusing on specific themes. This includes targeted technical themes (eg the digital economy) and facilitating themes (eg manufacturing in the future and research infrastructure). In addition, the plan is brave enough to clearly state that with limited funding and a more focused approach, there will be losers. Some existing areas will be reduced. This may be obvious, it will be painful for some but it needed saying clearly.

b) The focus on key people and developing leaders. The clear statement that the EPSRC will identify and invest preferentially in emerging and established leaders may not appear to some to be politically correct or even democratic but it gets my vote. Building on existing winners, together with creating even more, always strikes me as a good approach.

Yes, I agree that "the proof of the pudding is in the eating", but to end on another culinary note - "you can't make an omelette without cracking eggs".

University of Cambridge selects Escalab 250Xi

2011-07-29T08:35:00.000+01:00

For their demanding high resolution work on organic thin film semiconductors, the Optoelectronics Group in the Department of Physics has selected the Escalab 250Xi as best meeting their analysis requirements in both XPS and UPS. Following the installation of both Theta Probe and K-Alpha instruments earlier this year, we will soon have all three of the latest generation of Thermo Fisher Scientific XPS instruments at customer sites in the UK. All of course run Avantage software (now on Windows 7) the acknowledged leading XPS software for ease of use and productivity.

Towards 200mm GaN/Si

2011-07-28T08:30:00.000+01:00

Leading wafer manufacturer Siltronic AG and the Belgian nano-electronics research institute IMEC have concluded an agreement to collaborate on the development of gallium nitride layers on silicon substrates. Siltronic will partner IMEC in the GaN-on-Si programme aimed at delivering a manufacturable GaN technology on 200 mm silicon wafers for power device and LED applications.

Unveiling the unpronounceable

2011-07-26T08:30:00.000+01:00

Two new elements have been added to the Periodic Table - welcome ununquadium and ununhexium. The good news is that these are only temporary names. The new elements have been added to the periodic table after a three-year review conducted by a joint working party of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. In recent years, there have been several claims for the discovery of new chemical elements at positions 113, 114, 115, 116 and 118 on the periodic table. However the working party concluded that only elements 114 and 116 fulfilled criteria for official inclusion in the Periodic Table. The others, as yet, do not.

Apple porridge

2011-07-21T08:30:00.000+01:00

A court in Shenzhen, China, has sentenced three people to jail for stealing design details of Apple's iPad2 tablet computer from the contract manufacturer Foxcon. According to the Guangzhou Daily, the offences occurred in 2010 and meant that counterfeit versions of the iPad2 went on sale in China before Apple had launched the product. The court sentenced Xiao Chengsong, the legal agent of Maita Electronics, to 18 months in prison and fined him $23,000. It is reported that he paid about $31,000 for the design details. Two Foxconn employees who sold the details were also fined and given jail sentences. Officially the three were convicted of violating commercial secrets. I would imagine that Mr Jobs is not likely to forget in a hurry that Foxconn allowed Apple's design to walk out the door.

Reducing power

2011-07-19T08:30:00.000+01:00

For many years we have wanted our electronics to drive thing smaller, faster and cheaper. The current trend (need) is to reduce our reliance on electricity generated from fossil fuels. Equipment and devices need to be more energy efficient. Electronic Times has a very interesting article that looks at the technologies that are, and will, play a major role in this power revolution. The areas discussed include: 3-dimensional transistor IC architecture; solid state LED lighting; superconducting cables within the electricity grid distribution system and SiC power devices.

91.4 Tesla and 8.126 petaflops

2011-07-14T08:30:00.000+01:00

There must be something in the air in Germany. The last two weeks have seen some big numbers in science and engineering. In Dresden the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf has set a new world record for magnetic fields with 91.4 Tesla. The team at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory Dresden (HLD) made a coil weighing about 200 kilograms in which an electric current can create the giant magnetic field for a period of a few milliseconds. The coil survives the short period and intense Lorentz forces, through being made of a cooper alloy and being held in place using a plastic fibre corset. Whilst 500km up the road in Hamburg, a Japanese supercomputer was becoming the fastest in the world. The K Computer achieved a mere 8.162 quadrillion calculations per second, or 8.162 petaflops (ten to the power fifteen, flops = floating point operations per second). But can it cope with Windows and IE9?

Big enough ideas?

2011-07-07T08:30:00.000+01:00

Big Ideas for the Future is a new report from Research Councils UK (RCUK) and Universities UK that explores the research taking place in UK higher education under the auspices of the seven individual Research Councils. Quite rightly, RCUK promote the value of public investment in higher education and research and the positive impact this has on economic growth and the social wellbeing of the UK. In addition to emphasising the benefits of what has been done and is being done, it would be interesting to see the RCUK report tackling some more difficult issues. For example: considering what is not being done and how to prioritise what could be done against what should be done.

I can be dot grange

2011-06-30T08:30:00.000+01:00

Last month the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened the way for 2012 to be the year of .coke .apple and the likes. ICANN have approved a plan to dramatically increase the number of Internet domain name endings, called generic top-level domains (gTLDs), from the current 22, which includes such familiar domains as .com, .org and .net. together with about 250 country-level domains like .uk. Individuals and organisations will be able to set up a website with almost any address if they have a legitimate claim to the domain name and can pay the significant application and registration fees. I guess the $185,000 application fee may delay the dot grange domain a few years.

MOCVD, GaN and China

2011-06-28T08:30:00.000+01:00

IMS Research have produced an interesting report on the 2011 GaN MOCVD equipment market. The highlights of the report enforce the dominant position of China in this market. For example: China is expected in 2011 to account for 820 tools (75% of the market) with China's Q4 2011 installations alone expected to be larger than the entire worldwide 2009 market. 23 different companies will install tools in China, Veeco being the major supplier.

Appy day?

2011-06-23T08:30:00.000+01:00

Apps are an increasingly common feature in our daily lives, offering scientists exciting opportunities for handling data. The publication Materials Today wants to know how this technology could best serve materials scientists so on the 6th July they are hosting a webinar discussion on ideas for new apps. Materials Today are seeking six participants. All participants receive a $100 worth of Amazon vouchers and applicants should email their name, contact details, current occupation/affiliation and a short paragraph (300 approx.) on why you wish to participate to Rachel Holt.

Brave but good

2011-06-21T08:30:00.001+01:00

Whilst there is always some small print in any such offer, it is refreshing to note the 'on time or on us' approach of Open-Silicon. For qualifying work, through 2011, the silicon design and manufacturing company is offering to meet their scheduled commitment to deliver a prototype, or they will refund the originally quoted DNRE (Design Non-Recurring Engineering) cost up to a $500K maximum.

The (smallest) force be with you

2011-06-17T08:30:00.002+01:00

In a world generally dominated by big numbers it is great to note that the Australians are thinking small. A physics researcher, Dr Biercuk, at the University of Sydney, has won the National Measurement Institute Prize for excellence in measurement techniques by a scientist under 35. In collaboration with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, he used trapped atomic ions as sensitive detectors of applied forces and electromagnetic fields. In so doing, the researchers were able to measure forces with extraordinary sensitivity - down to the yoctonewton (yN) level. The yoctonewton represents one septillionth of a newton (ten to the minus twenty four). Biercuk and colleagues used a device consisting of about 60 beryllium ions confined in a Penning Trap. Any movement caused by an applied force was measured with a laser. The resulting measurement of forces with sensitivity at the level of 390 yoctonewtons with just one second of measurement eclipsed the previous record by three orders of magnitude.

Perspectives in Materials and Technologies for Photovoltaics

2011-06-15T08:30:00.001+01:00

30 June 2011, Manchester Conference Centre, Manchester, UK
A one day workshop run by the Institute of Physics to discuss major issues relevant to the current and emerging photovoltaic materials and technologies, processes and characterisation techniques.

A number of prominent speakers from industry and academia from both the UK and Europe will outline the current state of knowledge in a wide range of PV technologies.

More details at Institute of Physics

Oxford Instruments purchases Omicron and Omniprobe

2011-06-14T10:30:00.005+01:00

Oxford Instruments plc, announced the acquisition of Omicron NanoTechnology GmbH and Omniprobe, Inc. for a total of some £40m. These businesses are seen to strengthen the Group’s Nanotechnology Tools sector, by the addition of complementary products and technologies. The company believes that the acquired businesses share a similar customer base and routes to market with the existing companies and together with their existing capabilities, bring opportunities for the development of integrated new products.

Apple tops brand tree

2011-06-14T08:30:00.000+01:00

The recent announcement by WPP-owned research company Millward Brown states that Apple is now the most valuable brand. Registering an 84 percent increase in value over the past year, Apple has emerged as the most valuable brand in the world, ending the four-year reign of Google in the sixth annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study. Driven by the rise of the iPad, the study reports that the Apple brand is now estimated to be worth $153bn. This compares to Google $111bn, IBM $100bn and McDonald's $81bn. The most valuable brand in Europe being UK telecoms company Vodafone, which ranks 12th on the global list, with a brand value of $43bn.

Happy birthday your RH Prince Philip!

2011-06-10T08:30:00.003+01:00

The best quotes from Prince Philip

Absolute spheroids (almost)

2011-06-06T08:30:00.000+01:00

A group from the Centre for Cold Matter at Imperial College have made the most accurate measurement yet of the shape of the electron.The group studied the motion of electrons inside Ytterbium Fluoride and from this work, which spanned more than a decade, they conclude that the electron differs from being perfectly round by less than 0.000000000000000000000000001 cm. As they helpfully point out, this means that if the electron was magnified to the size of the solar system, it would still appear spherical to within the width of a human hair. The Editor is intrigued by Imperial's recent press statement that said the researchers are now planning to measure the electron's shape even more closely.

Potential ITO replacement

2011-05-20T08:30:00.002+01:00

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology claim a replacement for indium tin oxide, as widely used in displays and solar cells. The replacement is a transparent, conducting film produced in water and based on electrically conducting carbon nanotubes and plastic nanoparticles. The research team combined low concentrations of carbon nanotubes and conducting latex in a low-cost polystyrene film. The nanotubes and the latex together account for less than 1% of the weight of the conducting film.

NEXUS live

2011-05-18T08:30:00.003+01:00

EPSRC has recently awarded a contract to Newcastle University to provide the EPSRC National Service for X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). NEXUS (National EPSRC XPS User Service) is hosted by nanoLAB at Newcastle University. The service is available to researchers eligible to receive EPSRC funding.

Plasmas, Surfaces and Thin Films 8 June 2011

2011-05-18T08:30:00.001+01:00

This one day meeting at the Institute of Physics, London, has become an annual event providing a forum for those involved in using plasmas or ion beams for surface modification and thin film deposition. Steffen Cornelius from the Helmholtz-Zentrum, Dresden Rossendorf is giving an invited paper "Structure and Electrical Properties of Transparent Conductive Doped Zno Grown by Reactive Magnetron Sputtering".

Busily doing something

2011-05-16T08:30:00.000+01:00

As people, we don’t really care what we are doing - just as long as we are doing something. That is one of the findings summarised in an article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Apparently when psychologists think about why people do what they do, they tend to look for specific goals, attitudes and motivations. But they may be missing something more general - people like to be doing something. According to the authors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign “People have this inclination to do more, even if what they do is trivial ... we want to do something, but what we do ends up not mattering much. You could end up with productive behaviour, like work, or impulsive behaviour, like drug use.” Clearly Descartes got it wrong: I do therefore I am.

Sun shines on Intel?

2011-05-11T08:30:00.000+01:00

April put a shine on Intel's finances but also saw the IC giant take another small step in the solar business. MiaSole Inc., a manufacturer of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin-film photovoltaic solar panels, has entered into an agreement with Intel's Technical Manufacturing Services. Under the agreement, Intel will provide customized manufacturing services and systems, strategic consulting, operational knowledge and training to MiaSole as the company ramps its manufacturing facilities in 2011 and 2012. Oddly this is not Intel's first foray into the world of solar manufacturing. In June 2008, Intel spun off a start-up from inside its New Business Initiatives group (SpectraWatt) that made solar cells. The photovoltaic panel manufacturer set up it's activities in IBM’s former East Fishkill facility. After making a $90 million private investment in the plant and receiving another $8 million in federal grant funding SpectraWatt withered. The company has largely shut down its operations and its assets are being auctioned, with full closure expected in May. Better luck second time?

Warning

2011-05-09T08:30:00.000+01:00

Several readers are involved in materials growth techniques involving the use of phosphorous. The dangers associated with using this material are well known and safety precautions usually taken. Unfortunately, as reported by KTVU, last week's accident at Agilent Technologies in California is a reminder to us all of the potential risks involved. Over 100 staff were evacuated, 3 hurt and one person critically injured following an explosion whilst a maintenance team were cleaning an MBE machine that contained phosphorus. A regrettable but timely reminder to all of us to revisit and review our safety precautions and disaster planning procedures.

Granny Smith the stalker?

2011-05-07T08:30:00.000+01:00

I do like a good conspiracy theory. Whilst not quite in the Roswell UFO or JFK assassination category, Apple has recently been in the news. Privacy concerns erupted when security researchers said a file found on PCs linked to iPhones, allowed them to create maps of the phones' movements for up to a year. "Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone," the company said in a statement last week. "Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so." Even Steve Jobs, who is on medical leave, was used to defend the iPhone's use of location data and stressed that it had never tracked the movements of its customers. Unfortunately the conspiracy theorists were encouraged as Apple did acknowledged that iPhones keep a database of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers. That information can then be used to help calculate location for applications such as maps. The company implied that the privacy concerns raised by that file were partly based on a misunderstanding. But it also said that a software error was the reason the files are storing up to a year's worth of information and that it would fix that issue and others in a few weeks. Apple's reaction is reminiscent of its response last year to reports that the iPhone suffered from signal loss when held a certain way. They stayed quiet for a week, then denied there was a hardware problem but said it would fix how the iPhone displayed its signal bars. Two weeks later, it offered free protective cases that insulated the antenna, mitigating the signal loss. It still denied the design was flawed. The phone's appeal stayed intact.

Digital Swedes

2011-05-05T08:30:00.000+01:00

Sweden tops the rankings of the latest World Economic Forum Global Information Technology Report. The report, which covers 138 economies, focuses on the power of ICT to transform society in the next decade through modernisation and innovation. It looks at three areas: The general business, regulatory and infrastructure environment for ICT; the readiness of the three key sectors (individuals, businesses and governments) to use and benefit from ICT; and the actual usage of available ICT. Sweden and Singapore continue to top the rankings. Finland jumps to third place, while Switzerland and the United States are steady in fourth and fifth place respectively. The UK is ranked 15th behind several countries including, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Taiwan, Korea, China and Hong Kong.

Arnie Saccnuson?

2011-04-20T08:30:00.000+01:00

I am probably losing grasp of reality but I could not feel a pang of concern when I read that there is a project to drill a hole through the earth's mantle. Having just seen the impact of nature moving the earth are we really sure that we know what we are doing?

New III-V partner

2011-04-18T08:30:00.000+01:00

Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, Thales and CEA-Leti have announced that CEA-Leti has joined the III-V Lab in a move to strengthen the industrial research capabilities of the R&D centre. The new public-private partnership combines III-V semiconductor and silicon technologies with the enlarged III-V Lab including more than 130 staff. Focusing on practical applications for the combined potential of semiconductors, the III-V Lab will focus on four primary areas of research and markets: Integrated photonic circuits; High-power and microwave GaN-based microelectronics; Ultra-sensitive, highly-selective gas sensors;Thermal and near-infrared imagery.

Indium as well

2011-04-15T08:30:00.001+01:00

Supply chain issues for materials such as gallium and indium have been known for some time. According to a new report from NanoMarkets the price of Indium is heading to more than $1,000/kg. China is the world’s largest supplier of indium, having about three-quarters of world reserves and around half of production. Japanese indium users, who currently use 70% of China’s indium production may find themselves short of indium within a year. NanoMarkets expects firms in countries that have not been large suppliers of indium (eg Australia, Canada, Laos and Peru) to explore new extraction approaches to get into the market.

Sapphires are an LEDs best friend

2011-04-13T08:30:00.000+01:00

Sumitomo Chemical and Samsung LED have announced a joint venture in South Korea for R&D, manufacturing and sale of sapphire substrates for LEDs. This is clearly in response to the demand for sapphire substrates driven by growth in the market for LEDs in LCD TV backlights, interior lighting and automobile applications. Around five organisations currently control 90% of the global supply of sapphire ingots and Samsung LED wants to secure its supply as global demand rises.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark?

2011-04-11T08:30:00.001+01:00

It is a fair bet that neither Shakespeare, Hamlet, Polonius or Marcellus used an iPad, they probably had better things to do with their time. However if they had been transported in a time machine to 2011 then according to Reuters Denmark is the most expensive place to buy an iPad2 with the USA being the cheapest. I am sure that the cunning commercial people in Apple who set global pricing could quote the Danes a further line from Hamlet: "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't."

3D chips

2011-04-08T08:30:00.000+01:00

After several years of discussions it appears that, notwithstanding the above mentioned "power wall" issues, through-silicon-via technology (TSV) is being pushed by several companies to develop 3 dimensional ICs. Reporting on the GSA Memory Conference, Electronic Times notes that a plethora of companies, including IBM, Intel, Samsung, Toshiba, TSMC are exploring the possibility of stacking current devices in a 3-D configuration. Additionally, a 3-D working group within SEMI met for the first time last week to sketch out the initial wafer and tool standards for TSV technology. SEMI has three task groups within its 3-D group. A fourth group is being formed, which may be led by Applied Materials, Inc.

Winner - EMBE 2011 BandiT competition

2011-04-06T14:30:00.005+01:00

We are delighted to announce that the winner of our very successful BandiT competition is Miryam Elouneg-Jamroz from the Nanophysics and Semiconductors Group in Genoble. This is a joint group between the Institut Néel – CNRS / University J. Fourier, and the Institute for Nanoscience and Cryogenics of the CEA-Grenoble. The prize of €100 Amazon vouchers is on its way to her.

Surprisingly, nobody had the correct answer to the question "Why is the product called BandiT?". The answer is "Band-edge inferred Temperature". Miryam's answer was very creative, "fit a 'Band' through 'iT'" as was one of our users from ETH Zurich - "Band-edge intelligent Temperature measurement" - they know their BandiTs at ETH and have 3 systems!

We had a strong interest from both existing users and non-users ... and yes, there are some MBE scientists who don't yet measure their substrate temperature using BandiT, using all the benefits that it provides.

Thanks for your interest and we will run more competitions in the future - as one of the entrants (a senior Professor) commented "What an excellent ploy to get potential customers to research your product. Congratulations on a great product and an excellent sales strategy".

If you were not at EMBE but would like to have a go at answering the questions, these can be found here.

Game Over or Next Level?

2011-04-06T08:30:00.000+01:00

The above question is the subtitle and in effect the conclusion of a report into the future of computing power published by the National Research Council. The electronics industry is greatly concerned that microprocessor computing is coming to a “power wall”. As Moore’s Law runs out of steam and computing goes mobile, everyone is looking for ways to make the leap to new parallel programming solutions that use low-power multicore architectures. As single processors and CMOS technology approach the end of the technology line, the report concludes that chip designers and software developers must shift their focus to parallelism. To that end, the report specifically recommends that research should focus on:New algorithms that can exploit parallel processing; Developing new programming methods with an eye toward broader industry use; overhauling the traditional computing “stack” to account for parallelism and resource-management challenges; investing in new parallel architectures that are driven by emerging applications like mobile computing; investing in R&D that focuses on power efficiency at all system levels.

EMBE 2011 BandiT competition, win €100 Amazon vouchers - last call!

2011-03-31T08:30:00.001+01:00

EMBE registrants, please check your inbox for our email giving details of this competition. If you need any help with the answers, go to http://www.k-space.com/Products/BandiT.html

Good luck!

Old ideas are best

2011-03-30T08:30:00.000+01:00

Our Newsletter Editor, Dr John Grange, smiled when he read recent press reports about a new technique for boosting the performance of high powered GaN devices. In collaboration with Surrey University he worked back in 1980-2 on various inert gas/proton isolation techniques. To be successful, the NCSU team need to overcome the issues surrounding post implant processing and the lifetime/stability/reproducibility of the implant isolation under real device operational conditions. He came to the conclusion that there are better solutions, but he wishes them well.

Wanted: Innovative Ideas

2011-03-28T08:30:00.000+01:00

The Innovative electronics Manufacturing Research Centre (IeMRC) is seeking proposals from eligible UK academics for IeMRC research projects that align or deliver to the Centre's vision: The vision of the IeMRC is to be the UK's internationally recognised provider of world-class electronics manufacturing research. It will focus on sustaining and growing high value manufacturing in the UK by delivering innovative and exploitable new technologies through its highly skilled people and by providing strategic value to the electronics industry. The total funding available is £1.5M and they expect to fund upwards of five projects. Full details are available via this link.

Latest Barbie Phone?

2011-03-18T08:30:00.000Z

It is not a joke. Takashi Minato at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (with input from mobile telephone operator NTT DOCoMo) has come up with a human-shaped mobile phone that has a skin-like outer layer that apparently allows you to feel closer to the person on the other end of the phone. I love technological progress.

An Apple a day

2011-03-14T08:30:00.000Z

The use of mobile devices to access the internet has quadrupled in the US, and tripled in Western Europe over the past four years. However according to a report by Strategy Analytics mobile web browsing remains predominantly a `snacking' or `time critical' behaviour, whereas the PC/laptop is used for more leisurely or intensive usage scenarios. Thanks to surging iPad sales, Apple Inc. soared to the top of the league in worldwide mobile PC shipments with more than 10.2 million notebook and tablet PCs combined shipped in the fourth quarter of 2010. Gartner Inc. lowered its forecast for 2011 PC sales more than five percent citing a shift of consumers from mobile PCs/laptops. They expect growing consumer enthusiasm for mobile PC alternatives, such as the iPad and other media tablets, to dramatically slow home mobile PC sales, especially in mature markets. As Mr Jobs has often indicated, we do appear to be heading to the era of post PC devices.