Warning

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?

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

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?

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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?

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.