Tag Archives: germanium

Nanowire transistors: A next step for digital technology

News: Computer Power    February 9, 2011
Remember “Fast, cheap, good – pick any two?” How about “Fast, small, low power – pick any two?” Doesn’t ring a bell? This ‘perfect trio’ applies to transistors. Typically, if a transistor is fast, it uses energy like crazy. If it’s really small, it gets very hot. Fast and small often go together, but at [...]
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A new use for nanowires: E-skin (electronic skin)

News: Nanotechnology    October 6, 2010
What’s in a word? Call it a membrane and most people associate it with something scientific. Call it skin and there are definite human associations. So when the engineers at the University of California Berkeley (USA) developed a pressure sensitive electronic material made of nanowires, is it a membrane or skin? They’d like to call [...]
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A lasing germanium

News: Communications    February 5, 2010
Germanium, a semiconducting element, is not supposed to lase. That is, when it gets its electrons excited, they go flying off as heat – not light. So the conventional wisdom in microelectronic circles (and textbooks) is that germanium does not lase – and can’t be made to work in a laser. This was unfortunate, because [...]
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