World's First Transistor with Paper Interstrate Created
	State of the art field effect transistors found a new rival recently in the form of thin film transistors having as substrate and interstrate a single layer of paper. This is the first time when FETs find their way onto paper. The new field effect transistor with paper interstrate layer was developed by Elvira Fortunato and her colleagues of the Centro de Ingestigacao de Materiais at Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de ... [read more >>]
	22 July 2008, 09:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Revolutionary Plastics May See Laptops Bend
	When you hear 'plastic' the first thing that probably comes to your mind is 'electrical insulator'. This is perhaps because most plastics have exceptional electrical insulator properties, albeit this doesn't necessarily mean that all plastics share the same properties. It was proven some three decades ago that certain classes of plastics may conduct electricity and could be used to create some of the most amazing e ... [read more >>]
	02 July 2008, 03:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Flash Memory Works
	Flash memories are solid state electronic devices with random access memory capabilities used for fast digital information storage. They are used in a wide range of applications, such as storing BIOS routines in typical digital computers, as medium capacity hard drives for digital cameras or as memory cards for laptop computers and video consoles. The technology used to manufacture flash memories is based on EEPROM (electrica ... [read more >>]
	31 May 2008, 05:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Revolutionary Transistor Invented at Rensselaer
	A new invention that could replace the silicon transistor for high-power and high-temperature applications has recently captured the attention of American and Japanese automobile companies. A transistor based on a gallium nitride material, which can reduce power consumption and improve the efficiency of power electronics systems in devices ranging from house appliances all the way to defense equipment, has been created by Weixiao Huang, a ... [read more >>]
	14 May 2008, 05:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Tuning Nanomaterials with Pressure
	Nanomaterials play a high role in today's electronic devices ranging from transistors all the way to lasers and solar-energy conversion devices. A new technique developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could allow researchers to manipulate nanomaterials and their fundamental properties only by applying pressure. The experimental rig used by the LLNL researchers uses a cadmium selenide quantum dot solid plac ... [read more >>]
	12 May 2008, 06:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Nanomechanical Oscillators Could Replace Transistors in Some Computers
	Half a century ago a Japanese graduate student came with the idea of creating a revolutionary electrical circuit that would function on the basis of mechanical operations, opposite the electrical ones used today in digital computers. The device was called 'Parametron', but although computers based on these basic building blocks were put together, they were far less efficient than transistor based ones, in terms of power consumpti ... [read more >>]
	06 May 2008, 06:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

World's Smallest Transistor
	Moore's law accurately predicted computing power evolution for the last four decades, but in several years or so, maybe less than two decades, it will no longer be able to do so, unless the silicon material used to fabricate computer chips is soon replaced. Moore's law basically states that the number of transistors in a computer chip, thus its computing power, will double every two years. This means that more and more transistor ... [read more >>]
	18 April 2008, 04:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Switch Technology Brings 150,000 Times More Music to Your iPod
	Researchers at the Glasgow University unveiled a revolutionary switch technology that will bring a significant increase in the memory capacity for consumer electronics devices such as the extremely popular iPod media player. The new switches are molecule-sized pieces that boost data storage up to 150,000 times without having to increase the surface of storage media. The group of researchers exemplified their discovery by nami ... [read more >>]
	17 April 2008, 09:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Small Brain Goes Digital
	Stop looking for the most powerful computer in the world, you've already found it long ago, but are just not aware of it. We might not have the greatest memory to help us, however when it comes to processing power, our own brain is the ultimate computational machine. No wonder that computer processor designers are turning more and more to brain-like chip structures. Just recently, there has been developed such a device, capable of com ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 10:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Researchers Create Tiny Nanotube Radio
	Nanotube technology is finally showing its true power by creating the first nanotube radio out of carbon nanotube materials. This represents an important step for the introduction of carbon nanotube structures into the world of analog electronics and applications that derive directly from this branch. The claim is detailed by John Rogers, from the Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois, which is a corresponding aut ... [read more >>]
	29 January 2008, 09:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Is a Solid-State Device?
	The term solid-state device is mostly associated with electronic components. Almost all the electronic equipments we use today are composed of solid-state electronic devices. The word 'solid' refers to the fact that inside the electronic component there is no mechanical action taking place. The expression originated somewhere in the late 1950s, during the transition period from vacuum tube technology to semiconductor diodes and t ... [read more >>]
	24 January 2008, 11:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

No Need to Panic, Printable Transistors Are on Their Way!
	In 1965, Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel, predicted that the processing power of computers will double every two years, meaning that the number of transistors placed inexpensively of a microchip will increase exponentially. Moore's law, as it is currently known, describes pretty accurately the computing advances over the years; however, as more and more transistors are placed on a silicon chip with the same size, so do the manufa ... [read more >>]
	14 January 2008, 07:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

UCLA Scientists to Squeeze 5 Percent Transistor Juice
	A group of scientists at the University of California (UCLA) has managed to get a five percent boost in conventional transistors' performance without tampering with the manufacturing process. However, they re-created the circuit shape and produced 30 percent shorter wires than in the conventional designs. The researchers figured out that optimizing the layout during the computer design stage brings an amazing boost in perfor ... [read more >>]
	20 December 2007, 11:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Chips Are About to Reach Miniaturization Limits
	The transistor has just celebrated its sixtieth anniversary and it's been about 50 years since it was first integrated into a silicon chip. These tiny switches make a true "neuronal link" inside a processor, but judging by the rapid evolution in the chip world they tend to become useless soon. The need for more and more computing power has pushed proportional amounts of transistors in the same silicon space. They demanded ... [read more >>]
	18 December 2007, 05:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Transistor Minimization Hits Dead End
	Co-founder of the Intel Corporation, Gordon E. Moore, predicted in 1965 in a paper that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit would grow exponentially and duble every two years. Since then this prediction has become known as Moore's Law and described relatively accurately the advance of technology in the 21st century. However, 60 years after the invention of the first semiconductor tran ... [read more >>]
	17 December 2007, 04:02GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Intel and TSMC Go for Advanced High-k Technology
	The International Electron Devices Meeting surely was a good place for Intel to boast their newest technological breakthrough. The company have described their 45-nanometer logic technology, the first to integrate in high-volume manufacturing process high-k/metal gate transistors. They were not the only ones however to achieve spectacular results, as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) also reported successful results, but on a 3 ... [read more >>]
	13 December 2007, 04:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Father of Flash Memory to Develop 3D Processors
	Imagine how our lives would be had Fujio Masuoka not invented the flash memory back in the eighties. We would have never known the miracle of thumb drives or even subscriber-identity-modules in mobile telephony, not to mention memory cards or portable MP3 players. They would have never been born. Or, maybe someone would have invented them. Anyway, the point is that Masuoka made history in the consumer electronics industry. Th ... [read more >>]
	07 December 2007, 05:15GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What is the Limit to the Miniaturization of Chips?
	Most of the electronic devices produced today in the world use a kind of computer chip or microprocessor in their components. The scientists are asking themselves how further we can push back the miniaturization process, to create smaller, cheaper and faster chips. European researchers say there is plenty of scope to push back even more the limits of miniaturization. The CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) technolog ... [read more >>]
	07 November 2007, 05:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Spintronics Promises Ultrahigh Speed Electronic Circuits
	The silicon transistor was invented in 1947 at Bell Laboratories and most electronic circuits are based on it, such as radios, televisions and computers. Although it is the most reliable electronic component that switches currents, it has great disadvantages. We all know the basic language of the computer circuits is the binary code. That is because the transistor can only switch between two states: logical '1' or logical � ... [read more >>]
	27 October 2007, 04:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

One Type of Memory Fits All
	Nowadays computers use frequently several types of memory, from the main system memory called RAM (from random access memory) that has several generations, to video memory inside graphics cards, flash memory chips for external data storage and SSDs – solid state drives. These are the most frequently met memory types so manufacturers and computer users have sometimes a hard time figuring exactly what is computer memory. Things ... [read more >>]
	11 August 2007, 05:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

IBM, Samsung and Partners Prepare for the 32 nanometer Stage
	While Intel already introduces their 45nm CPUs this year and IBM alongside AMD plan to release such devices by 1H 2008, the quest for miniaturization continues with the 32nm stage. The development of the future 32nm transistors has been recently reconsidered through an agreement between IBM, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung Electronics, along with joint-development alliance partners Infineon Technologies AG and Freescale ... [read more >>]
	24 May 2007, 07:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia