There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

The present invention provides stretchable, and optionally printable, semiconductors and electronic circuits capable of providing good performance when stretched, compressed, flexed or otherwise deformed. Stretchable semiconductors and electronic circuits of the present invention preferred for some applications are flexible, in addition to being stretchable, and thus are capable of significant elongation, flexing, bending or other deformation along one or more axes. Further, stretchable semiconductors and electronic circuits of the present invention may be adapted to a wide range of device configurations to provide fully flexible electronic and optoelectronic devices.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/311/5758/208.full.pdf

Stretchable form of single crystal silicon for high performance electronics on rubber substrates

Field-effect transistors (FETs) based on semi-conductor nanowires could one day replace standard silicon MOSFETs in miniature electronic circuits. MOSFETs, or metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors, are a type of transistor used for high-speed switching and in a computer's integrated circuits. A specially designed nanowire with a germanium shell and silicon core has shown promise as a nanometre-scale field-effect transistor: it has a near-perfect channel for electronic conduction. Now, in transistor configuration, this germanium/silicon nanowire is shown to have properties including high conductance and short switching time delay that are better than state-of-the-art silicon MOSFETs. In a transistor configuration, a new germanium/silicon nanowire has characteristics such as conductance, on-current and switching time delay that are better than those of state-of-the-art silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transitors. Semiconducting carbon nanotubes1,2 and nanowires3 are potential alternatives to planar metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs)4 owing, for example, to their unique electronic structure and reduced carrier scattering caused by one-dimensional quantum confinement effects1,5. Studies have demonstrated long carrier mean free paths at room temperature in both carbon nanotubes1,6 and Ge/Si core/shell nanowires7. In the case of carbon nanotube FETs, devices have been fabricated that work close to the ballistic limit8. Applications of high-performance carbon nanotube FETs have been hindered, however, by difficulties in producing uniform semiconducting nanotubes, a factor not limiting nanowires, which have been prepared with reproducible electronic properties in high yield as required for large-scale integrated systems3,9,10. Yet whether nanowire field-effect transistors (NWFETs) can indeed outperform their planar counterparts is still unclear4. Here we report studies on Ge/Si core/shell nanowire heterostructures configured as FETs using high-κ dielectrics in a top-gate geometry. The clean one-dimensional hole-gas in the Ge/Si nanowire heterostructures7 and enhanced gate coupling with high-κ dielectrics give high-performance FETs values of the scaled transconductance (3.3 mS µm-1) and on-current (2.1 mA µm-1) that are three to four times greater than state-of-the-art MOSFETs and are the highest obtained on NWFETs. Furthermore, comparison of the intrinsic switching delay, τ = CV/I, which represents a key metric for device applications4,11, shows that the performance of Ge/Si NWFETs is comparable to similar length carbon nanotube FETs and substantially exceeds the length-dependent scaling of planar silicon MOSFETs.

Ge/Si nanowire heterostructures as high-performance field-effect transistors

https://cyberleninka.org/article/n/148078.pdf

Nanowire electronic and optoelectronic devices

The present invention provides methods, systems and system components for transferring, assembling and integrating features and arrays of features having selected nanosized and/or microsized physical dimensions, shapes and spatial orientations. Methods of the present invention utilize principles of ‘soft adhesion’ to guide the transfer, assembly and/or integration of features, such as printable semiconductor elements or other components of electronic devices. Methods of the present invention are useful for transferring features from a donor substrate to the transfer surface of an elastomeric transfer device and, optionally, from the transfer surface of an elastomeric transfer device to the receiving surface of a receiving substrate. The present methods and systems provide highly efficient, registered transfer of features and arrays of features, such as printable semiconductor element, in a concerted manner that maintains the relative spatial orientations of transferred features.

Pattern Transfer Printing by Kinetic Control of Adhesion to an Elastomeric Stamp

Inexpensive sophisticated circuitry can be ‘painted’ on to plastic or glass substrates. Macroelectronic circuits made on substrates of glass or plastic could one day make computing devices ubiquitous owing to their light weight, flexibility and low cost1. But these substrates deform at high temperatures so, until now, only semiconductors such as organics and amorphous silicon2 could be used, leading to poor performance. Here we present the use of low-temperature processes to integrate high-performance multi-nanowire transistors into logical inverters and fast ring oscillators on glass substrates. As well as potentially enabling powerful electronics to permeate all aspects of modern life, this advance could find application in devices such as low-cost radio-frequency tags and fully integrated high-refresh-rate displays.

/pdf/nanotechnology-high-speed-integrated-nanowire-circuits-3fef3jjq69.pdf

Nanotechnology: High-speed integrated nanowire circuits

This paper provides an introductory survey on the various systems that exploit magnetic fields for positioning. Such systems find applications in those scenarios, both indoors and outdoors, where global navigation satellite systems are not available or fail to provide information with the needed accuracy. While the main idea of using electromagnetic fields to provide position information dates back to the past century, new application-led research on this topic has emerged in recent years. Results have expanded the application range of magnetic positioning technologies and form now a domain of knowledge that enables realization of positioning systems applicable to indoor and outdoor environments. This paper provides the main characteristics of different positioning systems with focus on those solutions that are based on low-frequency magnetic fields. Some background theory is presented and positioning results from the literature are analyzed and compared.

Magnetic Field-Based Positioning Systems

In this work, we show experimentally that wireless power transfer (WPT) using strongly coupled magnetic resonance (SCMR) and traditional induction are equivalent. We demonstrate that for a given coil separation, and to within 4%, strongly coupled magnetic resonance and traditional induction produce the same theoretical efficiency of wireless power transfer versus distance. Moreover, we show that the difference between traditional induction and strongly coupled magnetic resonance is in the implementation of the impedance matching network where strongly coupled magnetic resonance uses the mini-loop impedance match. The mini-loop impedance mach provides a low-loss, high-ratio impedance transformation that makes it desirable for longer distance wireless power transfer, where large impedance transformations are needed to maximize power transfer.

Experimental demonstration of the equivalence of inductive and strongly coupled magnetic resonance wireless power transfer

This paper introduces the first robust self-sustained electrical soliton oscillator. It self-starts by amplifying background noise to produce a stable train of periodic electrical soliton pulses. The oscillator is made possible by coupling a nonlinear transmission line with a unique amplifier that tames the instability-prone soliton dynamics. Two experimental prototypes, built at the discrete level, fully demonstrate the detailed operation of the circuit. The soliton oscillator is an electrical analog of optical soliton mode-locked systems

/pdf/electrical-soliton-oscillator-1gmsluhoxg.pdf

Electrical soliton oscillator

We present a transmission line based impedance compression network (ICN) for application in RF-to-dc conversion. We show that the ICN is able to significantly compress the undesired input impedance variation that occurs when there is a large variation of input power. We designed and measured an ICN for a 4 W, 4.6 GHz rectifier and show that the impedance is significantly compressed with the ICN. We then demonstrate the ICN in an outphasing system where we achieve up to a 37% improvement in efficiency at back-off power and an overall more efficient design over large input power variation.

David S. Ricketts

Papers

Nanotechnology: High-speed integrated nanowire circuits

Magnetic Field-Based Positioning Systems

Experimental demonstration of the equivalence of inductive and strongly coupled magnetic resonance wireless power transfer

Electrical soliton oscillator

An Efficient, Watt-Level Microwave Rectifier Using an Impedance Compression Network (ICN) With Applications in Outphasing Energy Recovery Systems