Block copolymer materials self-assemble at the nanometer scale. A chemically patterned substrate can direct the self-assembly, replicating the two-dimensional pattern upwards into the block copolymer ...
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Graphene possesses tremendous electrical properties, making it suitable for numerous applications. The current method of fabricating this material involves growing or isolating a full sheet of graphen...
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Managing power consumption of integrated circuits such as microprocessors is important for conserving energy, improving battery life and reducing issues with device cooling. A common method to reduce ...
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The lithographic process is one of the key enabling technologies of the digital electronics era. Lithography allows hundreds of millions of components to be fabricated on a single chip with pattern fe...
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A DNA microarray is a collection of microscopic DNA spots arranged on a solid surface via covalent attachment to a chemically suitable substrate. DNA microarrays allow hundreds of thousands of DNA seq...
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Diodes are two-terminal electrical devices that only allow electrical current to flow in one direction. Diodes are used often in electrical circuits to extract a direct current from an alternating cur...
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Silicon is a major component in semiconductors due to its good electrical properties, reasonable cost and manufacturability. Zinc oxide is promising as a semiconductive material because it has a large...
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Flexible single-crystalline semiconductors used in high-performance micro- and macro-electronics have been intensely studied in recent years.  Thin-film transistors using single crystalline silic...
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Because today’s transistors transfer millions of electrons at a time, they generate a large amount of heat when packed together on semiconductor chips. As a result, chips can only contain a set ...
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As electronic gadgets continue to get smaller, tiny metal silicide nanowires may one day be used as fundamental building blocks in devices from cell phones to lasers.  Metal silicides already are...
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Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) have been used to create mechanical resonators for switching, filtering and other purposes in electrical systems. NEMS/ME...
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Tunneling magneto-resistive (TMR) read heads are the next generation in magneto-resistive readers for hard drive disks. TMRs typically include a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) that is composed of an o...
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Significant efforts are currently underway to create ferroelectric memory (FeRAM) devices from the materials Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 and SrBi2Ta2O9. The main disadvantages of these materials are the volatility of...
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Quantum computers use quantum particles (e.g., electrons), called qubits, to process information, instead of bits as in classical, serial computing. Unlike bits, which exist in either the 0 or 1 state...
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Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is one of the most promising techniques for creating semiconductor devices, integrated circuits and microelectronic devices with nanoscale features (i.e., smaller...
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For integrated circuits, including very large scale integration (VLSI) circuits, to work properly, the signals traveling along the gates and interconnects must be properly timed. Using classical case ...
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The fabrication of semiconductor devices involves growing thin films on wafers and patterning them. However, thin films typically exhibit intrinsic stress, which can lead to failure of electronic devi...
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Unlike the transparent masks used in traditional lithographic techniques, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography uses reflective masks.  To create these reflective masks, a mask blank first must b...
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Silicon-silicon (Si-Si) bonding is used in a wide array of technologies, including micromechanical structures and power electronics, and is a candidate for manufacturing silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waf...
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As the development of nanoscale devices increases, the need for materials and methods that can duplicate nanoscale patterns over large areas is growing. Block copolymer materials are useful in nanofab...
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Tunneling magneto-resistive (TMR) read heads are the next generation in magneto-resistive readers for hard drive disks. TMRs typically include a magnetic tunnel junction that is composed of an oxidize...
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Production of faster, more powerful microelectronics requires that device features continue to shrink in size. Current lithographic processes based on chemically amplified resists routinely pattern fe...
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PIN diodes are semiconductor devices that include an undoped intrinsic semiconductor region between the p-type and n-type regions. These diodes are commonly integrated as photodetectors on silicon CMO...
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Very large scale integrated (VLSI) circuits are tested before use to evaluate reliability and performance. The two most common testing methods are serial-scan and random access scan (RAS). The se...
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Maskless lithography is cheaper and simpler than current methods of fabricating microfluidic channels, such as micro-molding, that require a final bonding step to attach a top cover to enclose the cha...
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