To be fair, bell labs has an incredibly bad track record in cashing in on their research results. They seem to be lacking basic mechanisms to utilitize they research lab.
The invention of the bipolar transistor created a 260b$ industry, something Bell never really was part of.
Also, it can hardly be repeated often enough: Corporate research is dead.
AMD is roughly two years behind Intel in semiconductor process technology. Due to this and other reasons (SOI, R&D/SGAA vs. revenue) they are in a very bad cost position. Even if they have a better design, Intel is easily able to offset this with pure manufacturing power.
The playground is more level for Nvidia vs. ATI since both rely on foundries.
It's tough to tell whether ATI/AMD will be able to capitalize on this situation. They are very lucky to have a new opportunity, otherwise they wold be toast.
Two things are for certain: Nvidia is getting into rougher waters soon and Intel will not give up on this one easily.
Normal RTA uses halogen lamps with relatively slow ramp rates and process times in seconds to minutes. FLA operates in the millesecond regime - fast enough to heat only the wafer surface.
Silicides are used to create low resistivity contacts to doped silicon. Typically a metal is deposited on the wafer surface and then heated to react with the crystalline substrate to form the silicide. Commonly used silicides are NiSi, CoSi and TiSi.
You got the copper right. The here appears to be that they are using copper down to the silicon substrate. Copper does easily "poison" the electrically active regions and is hence typically only used in higher level wiring layers. Getting it down to the silicon is challenging.
The advanced activation techniques refer to thermal processing steps that are used to incorporporate N and P dopants into the crystal lattice. The challenge here is to heat the wafer to above 1000C within seconds. IBM is probably a laser or flash lamp process for this.
Am I missing something? Does someone know about his background?
Probably his main background is that he works for a competitor of Infineon. Why would he single out a third party supplier otherwise? Even if it was a broken part, it would still be Apples fault to design it in.
Why would he want to work in the US? Europeans usually want to stay in Europe. Doing an internship abroad is a nice way to understand other business cultures without having any lasting commitment. It's also very easy for US companies to hire european interns on a J-1.
Often the easiest way to find an internship position in the US is to apply locally at a large company that has subsidiaries in both Europe and the US. Good candidates for his field are probably IBM, Intel, IBM, SAP, Oracle...
Contacting an agency is also a good idea. You are going to need one to take care of the J-1 anyhow. The same organizations are often also offering help in finding a position as an intern.
For example here (guessing that OP is German): www.gaccny.com, www.travelworks.com...
Yes, you are right. There are many ways to induce first order phase transitions in various system, leading to the release or take up of heat.
The special thing about the device in the article is that this phase transition is induced by an electric field, the so called electrocaloric effect. Therefore no movable parts in the system are required. Previously only small temperature differences have been demonstrated in metal oxides (smaller than 10K). By using ferroelectric/antiferroelectric polymers they are apparently able to increase the temperature difference to above 10K, which is a very significant increase.
That said, this of course typical university hype science and practial application faces many engineering and also intrinsic scientific problems. First of all they have not measured the temperature difference, but deduced it indirectly from maxwell relations. In a realistic set up the temperature difference will be lower.
A second problem is intrinsic to the material and has been conveniently neglected: Since the principle relies on a solid insulator the heat conductivitiy is extremely low. (No convection, no electronic heat conduction). This means that you are able to create a temperature gradient, but are not able to transfer a lot of heat, thereby severely limiting the cooling ability.
A third problem is that this effect only works in a very limited temperature range (above 70ÂC). A fourth problem is hysteretic heating due to ferroelectricity...
Yes, you are right. There are many ways to induce first order phase transitions in various system, leading to the release or take up of heat.
The special thing about the device in the article is that this phase transition is induced by an electric field, the so called electrocaloric effect. Therefore no movable parts in the system are required. Previously only small temperature differences have been demonstrated in metal oxides (click...
No, in fact it is not more bloated than the semiconductor industry to which the solar cell industry is inherently coupled. Just take a glimpse of what is happening in that sector to understand where the solar cell industry is heading in 5-10 years.
The presence of a highly oxidizing substance would imply that organic matter is attacked and degraded quickly. If a high level of perchlorates is present on the surface of mars this could mean that it is a barren place devoid of organic life as we know it.
(This is chlorex after all, remember you use it to kill germs?)
The nanotech thin film solar material is the cheapest.... In mass production they are predicting $1/watt for panels.
Ironic, how can they be the cheapest on the market if they have not even scaled up production yet? Hint: They are not the only ones with this technology, they are not the best, they are just the noisiest.
Companies like that can drag entire sectors down if they fail. It's a pity.
So much of the cost is interred in hard work like ladder-climbing, wire-twisting, roof-screwing, and so on, there isn't much left to improve
That is a good point, but in fact there is much to improve. Integrating solar cells into new buildings from the planning stage on would drive down installation costs significantly.
Slashdot Mirror
"But how much does having your own process technology matter these days, versus contracting out to a foundary?"
Intel: 6 billion profit per year
Rest of industry involved in cutting edge logic: zilch on average.
To be fair, bell labs has an incredibly bad track record in cashing in on their research results. They seem to be lacking basic mechanisms to utilitize they research lab.
The invention of the bipolar transistor created a 260b$ industry, something Bell never really was part of.
Also, it can hardly be repeated often enough: Corporate research is dead.
Just looking at this from a manufacturing side:
AMD is roughly two years behind Intel in semiconductor process technology. Due to this and other reasons (SOI, R&D/SGAA vs. revenue) they are in a very bad cost position. Even if they have a better design, Intel is easily able to offset this with pure manufacturing power.
The playground is more level for Nvidia vs. ATI since both rely on foundries.
It's tough to tell whether ATI/AMD will be able to capitalize on this situation. They are very lucky to have a new opportunity, otherwise they wold be toast.
Two things are for certain: Nvidia is getting into rougher waters soon and Intel will not give up on this one easily.
Normal RTA uses halogen lamps with relatively slow ramp rates and process times in seconds to minutes. FLA operates in the millesecond regime - fast enough to heat only the wafer surface.
Almost...
Silicides are used to create low resistivity contacts to doped silicon. Typically a metal is deposited on the wafer surface and then heated to react with the crystalline substrate to form the silicide. Commonly used silicides are NiSi, CoSi and TiSi.
You got the copper right. The here appears to be that they are using copper down to the silicon substrate. Copper does easily "poison" the electrically active regions and is hence typically only used in higher level wiring layers. Getting it down to the silicon is challenging.
The advanced activation techniques refer to thermal processing steps that are used to incorporporate N and P dopants into the crystal lattice. The challenge here is to heat the wafer to above 1000C within seconds. IBM is probably a laser or flash lamp process for this.
Am I missing something? Does someone know about his background?
Probably his main background is that he works for a competitor of Infineon. Why would he single out a third party supplier otherwise? Even if it was a broken part, it would still be Apples fault to design it in.
Yep, now we have analysts predicting and solving engineering problems. What's next?
Somhow I read:
'Hate to say it but likely you get very fat'
And sorry, but that is often true for Europeans visiting the US.
Why would he want to work in the US? Europeans usually want to stay in Europe. Doing an internship abroad is a nice way to understand other business cultures without having any lasting commitment. It's also very easy for US companies to hire european interns on a J-1.
Often the easiest way to find an internship position in the US is to apply locally at a large company that has subsidiaries in both Europe and the US. Good candidates for his field are probably IBM, Intel, IBM, SAP, Oracle...
Contacting an agency is also a good idea. You are going to need one to take care of the J-1 anyhow. The same organizations are often also offering help in finding a position as an intern.
For example here (guessing that OP is German): www.gaccny.com, www.travelworks.com ...
They propose to combine it with peltier elements to construct a heat pump. As always the term 'refridgerator' is misleading.
(reposting of previously mangled up comment)
Yes, you are right. There are many ways to induce first order phase transitions in various system, leading to the release or take up of heat.
The special thing about the device in the article is that this phase transition is induced by an electric field, the so called electrocaloric effect. Therefore no movable parts in the system are required. Previously only small temperature differences have been demonstrated in metal oxides (smaller than 10K). By using ferroelectric/antiferroelectric polymers they are apparently able to increase the temperature difference to above 10K, which is a very significant increase.
That said, this of course typical university hype science and practial application faces many engineering and also intrinsic scientific problems. First of all they have not measured the temperature difference, but deduced it indirectly from maxwell relations. In a realistic set up the temperature difference will be lower.
A second problem is intrinsic to the material and has been conveniently neglected: Since the principle relies on a solid insulator the heat conductivitiy is extremely low. (No convection, no electronic heat conduction). This means that you are able to create a temperature gradient, but are not able to transfer a lot of heat, thereby severely limiting the cooling ability.
A third problem is that this effect only works in a very limited temperature range (above 70ÂC). A fourth problem is hysteretic heating due to ferroelectricity...
Link to the original article: click
Yes, you are right. There are many ways to induce first order phase transitions in various system, leading to the release or take up of heat.
The special thing about the device in the article is that this phase transition is induced by an electric field, the so called electrocaloric effect. Therefore no movable parts in the system are required. Previously only small temperature differences have been demonstrated in metal oxides (click ...
No, in fact it is not more bloated than the semiconductor industry to which the solar cell industry is inherently coupled. Just take a glimpse of what is happening in that sector to understand where the solar cell industry is heading in 5-10 years.
Making mad money can also encourage others to get into the industry.
The solar cell industry is already incredibly bloated and does not even obey real economic rules due to high subsidies.
Looks like i mixed things up. Perchlorate isn't that aggressive after all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate
The presence of a highly oxidizing substance would imply that organic matter is attacked and degraded quickly. If a high level of perchlorates is present on the surface of mars this could mean that it is a barren place devoid of organic life as we know it.
(This is chlorex after all, remember you use it to kill germs?)
ok? So why is this so special? I understand melanin may degrade easily, but hasn't a lot of similar organic matter been found in fossils earlier?
Indeed, wasn't there a similar indian initiative that never really caught on? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simputer
Yeah, but you can manufacture thousands of LEDS, if not more, with the amount of Gallium that a single flat panel requires in Indium.
Well, Gallium may be rare, but it is not used in flat panel production.
Indium is used in ITO (Indium Tin Oxide), which is the best transparent conductor known so far and literally is a backbone of flat panels.
The nanotech thin film solar material is the cheapest. ...
In mass production they are predicting $1/watt for panels.
Ironic, how can they be the cheapest on the market if they have not even scaled up production yet? Hint: They are not the only ones with this technology, they are not the best, they are just the noisiest.
Companies like that can drag entire sectors down if they fail. It's a pity.
World gallium supplies are actually quite limited. We're using so much in flat-panel monitors that we'd exhaust current known gallium in 10 years
You are mixing things up with Indium?
Gallium is vastly superior to silicon
Gallium does not do much. It's a metal, it melts at low temperatures.
You are probably talking about Gallium Arsenide?
Moore's law means whatever Gordon Moore means it does this week.
Actually he wrote a paper about it in the 70ies where he very specifically defined what he meant.
Cut out the disinformation please.
So much of the cost is interred in hard work like ladder-climbing, wire-twisting, roof-screwing, and so on, there isn't much left to improve
That is a good point, but in fact there is much to improve. Integrating solar cells into new buildings from the planning stage on would drive down installation costs significantly.