27/07/2016
When commissioned in 2010 by Lord Mandelson, then Industry Secretary, to look at the current and future role of technology and innovation centres(TICs) in the UK, Dr Hermann Hauser found what he said was a ‘critical gap between research findings … and their development into commercial propositions’.
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17/12/2015
The continuation of Moore’s Law requires a combination of both physical and functional scaling, where our main challenge in lithography is to continue pushing the physical scaling limits in a controlled and cost-effective way. By serving as the collaboration hub of the industry in this area, imec is playing an important role in helping the industry to address the major technical challenges towards continued physical scaling. This is being done on multiple fronts.
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08/12/2015
Carbon nanotubes have been seen as having a wide range of potential applications for many years, but their use in the ‘real world’ has been a long time coming. The first research into such structures was reported in 1952 by a Russian team, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that the technology began to gain some traction. Even today, their use – particularly in industrial applications – remains the exception
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08/12/2015
November saw the opening of the Quantum Metrology Institute (QMI). Based at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, it forms a key element in the UK’s efforts to exploit quantum technology commercially through the National Quantum Technologies programme.
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24/11/2015
Life has a distinct advantage over the processes used to make most of today’s products – it works at room temperature, involves very little in the way of toxic chemicals and can create intricate structures with no external help.
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28/10/2015
Depending upon whose prediction you are inclined to believe, the Internet of Things could comprise between 20billion and 50billion devices within the next few years. And those kinds of numbers suggest there is an opportunity to develop innovative products that not only provide point solutions, but also have wider application.
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10/03/2015
It helps to have the word 'quantum' in a technology's name when you want mainstream potential. It's even better when it's accompanied by a colourful demonstration. So the quantum dot had plenty going for it when it became one of the centrepieces at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.
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10/03/2015
At the end of 2009, Lord Mandelson, then Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, launched a strategy document that was intended to help UK industry get a jump on the rest of the world when it came to plastic electronics.
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09/12/2014
The semiconductor manufacturing sector's mission to conform to the demands of Moore's Law has begun to run into a number of significant barriers posed by physical properties.
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25/11/2014
The benefits available from leading edge process technologies have encouraged companies to embrace the concept of systems on chip (SoC). Performance, power and integration are just some of the benefits available.
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23/09/2014
There are applications where it would be beneficial to have a self-sustaining, fully embedded monitoring system as part of a structure in order to ensure that structure's integrity. Examples include wind turbines, tidal blades, aeroplane wings, ship propellers and hulls. A project set up under the European Framework 7 has been looking at the possibility of developing such monitoring systems.
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22/07/2014
Traditionally, transport – and passenger transport in particular – has been provided in a non integrated way. The Transport Systems Catapult has been set up to change this. "We call the market we focus on intelligent mobility," stated Paul Zanelli, chief technical officer, "which is the efficient and cost effective movement of goods and people."
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13/05/2014
Colonoscopies can be an uncomfortable procedure for patients who may already be worried about what the results may find. The process involves probing the large intestine with a tiny fibre optic camera, known as an endoscope, embedded in a 4ft long, flexible tube.
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13/05/2014
Since its discovery, graphene – the atom thick carbon material – has been hailed as the heir apparent to silicon. It has much to commend it; an unusual chemical structure means electrons move freely along the plane of the graphene sheet, encountering practically no resistance. But that's also where graphene's problems start. Unlike silicon, it is simply too good a conductor to operate effectively as a switch without some circuit design and materials processing gymnastics.
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25/03/2014
Once the plain old telephone service, the role of the telephone wire continues to be refashioned. The latest digital subscriber line (DSL) standard being developed – G.fast – uses 106MHz of phone wire spectrum to deliver gigabit broadband, a far cry from its original purpose of carrying a 3kHz voice call. The developments (see fig 1) complement fibre getting ever closer to the home.
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28/01/2014
Today's world is permeated by electronics, from industry to communications, medicine to the military. Without it, many of our activities would slow to a crawl, if not grind to a halt.
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28/01/2014
Graphene is starting to filter onto the market. HEAD claims its tennis racquets that feature graphene in the shaft are lighter, have better weight distribution and offer more power. Flexible security tags are also starting to be used using graphene circuitry.
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10/12/2013
No one disputes that carbon nanotubes have the potential to be a wonder technology: their properties include a thermal conductivity higher than diamond, greater mechanical strength than steel – orders of magnitude by weight – and better electrical conductivity than copper.
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12/11/2013
Intelligent vision systems are relatively new; they provide a link between the harder domain of modern technology and the softer world we live in.
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08/10/2013
The human brain is the most efficient computer there is and creating a hardware equivalent has long been close to the top of many technological wish lists for decades. Yet, despite the efforts of researchers from all corners of the globe, that goal has yet to be achieved.
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24/09/2013
The idea of the connected car and of vehicles communicating with some kind of infrastructure have been developing for some time, and it appears the technologies involved are beginning to come together.
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10/09/2013
Mobile device users in the UK are about to be offered mouth watering deals to entice them to shift to faster data rate services as competition finally comes to the 4G market. 02 has just launched its LTE based (Long Term Evolution) services, while Vodafone and 3G UK – the other operators with 4G licences – will follow on shortly as they try to make up ground on Everything Everywhere, which was allowed to use its 1800MHz spectrum last October.
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09/07/2013
Whatever the problem, or quest for improvement, with image processing, the trend is to try and find solutions in software. The problem is that software complexity turns graphics processors into power hungry beasts.
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09/07/2013
Dr Sian Fogden was a researcher at Imperial College, studying nanotubes for her PhD, when Linde Electronics became interested in her work. Now Linde Nanomaterials, part of Linde Electronics, is pursuing this line of work in California with Dr Fogden at the helm. The resulting product, a nanotube ink, was launched at NT13 – the international nanotube conference held in Helsinki in the closing days of June 2013.
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25/06/2013
Gallium nitride (GaN) has been touted as 'the next big thing' in power electronics applications for some time now. In speed, temperature, efficiency and power handling, various implementations of the technology are set to take over as silicon power devices reach their limits, and the hottest topics at recent power exhibitions in the US and Europe have surrounded the introduction of GaN devices.
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