Samsung Samples 50nm 16Gb NAND Flash

Samsung inches closer to making SSDs more mainstream

When it comes to storage technology on computers, hard drive technology has advanced the slowest as far as performance is concerned. Companies like Samsung are looking to Flash Solid State Disks (SSDs) to replace the spinning disk and reduce loading times for applications.

SSDs have the advantage of rapid response times without having to wait for a hard drive to spin up/seek and have drastically reduced power consumption compared to traditional hard drives. SSDs use zero watts when not being accessed, and as little as 200 milliwatts during read/write activities.

Given the lower power requirements, company’s like Sony and Fujitsu are looking to Samsung to provide SSDs for their mobile computers. Samsung also uses its SSD drives on the Q30 notebook and Q1 UMPC.

Samsung announced today that it has produced samples of the world's first 16Gb NAND flash memory device built on a 50 nanometer process. The multi-level cell (MLC) design uses a 4KB page size instead of the 2KB used in competing designs. As a result, read speeds are double that of 2KB designs while write speeds are increased by 150%.

The increased storage capacity and faster write speeds will help Samsung reach its goal of producing 128GB SSDs by the first half of 2008.

Samsung will begin mass production its new MLC 16Gb NAND flash memory chips in Q1 2007.

(c) www.dailytech.com

Cheaper LEDs from breakthrough in ZnO nanowire research

SEM image of p-type ZnO nanowires created by electrical engineering professor Deli Wang at UC San Diego . Note: the blue color was added in photoshop. Credit: Deli Wang/UCSD

Engineers at UC San Diego have synthesized a long-sought semiconducting material that may pave the way for an inexpensive new kind of light emitting diode (LED) that could compete with today's widely used gallium nitride LEDs, according to a new paper in the journal Nano Letters.

To build an LED, you need both positively and negatively charged semiconducting materials; and the engineers synthesized zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoscale cylinders that transport positive charges or "holes" – so-called "p-type ZnO nanowires." They are endowed with a supply of positive charge carrying holes that, for years, have been the missing ingredients that prevented engineers from building LEDs from ZnO nanowires. In contrast, making "n-type" ZnO nanowires that carrier negative charges (electrons) has not been a problem. In an LED, when an electron meets a hole, it falls into a lower energy level and releases energy in the form of a photon of light.
Deli Wang, an electrical and computer engineering professor from UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering, and colleagues at UCSD and Peking University, report synthesis of high quality p-type zinc oxide nanowires in a paper published online by the journal Nano Letters.
"Zinc oxide nanostructures are incredibly well studied because they are so easy to make. Now that we have p-type zinc oxide nanowires, the opportunities for LEDs and beyond are endless," said Wang.
Wang has filed a provisional patent for p-type ZnO nanowires and his lab at UCSD is currently working on a variety of nanoscale applications.
"Zinc oxide is a very good light emitter. Electrically driven zinc oxide single nanowire lasers could serve as high efficiency nanoscale light sources for optical data storage, imaging, and biological and chemical sensing," said Wang.
To make the p-type ZnO nanowires, the engineers doped ZnO crystals with phosphorus using a simple chemical vapor deposition technique that is less expensive than the metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) technique often used to synthesize the building blocks of gallium nitride LEDs. Adding phosphorus atoms to the ZnO crystal structure leads to p-type semiconducting materials through the formation of a defect complex that increases the number of holes relative to the number of free electrons.

"Zinc oxide is wide band gap semiconductor and generating p-type doping impurities that provide free holes is very difficult – particularly in nanowires. Bin Xiang in my group worked day and night for more than a year to accomplish this goal," said Wang.
The starting materials and manufacturing costs for ZnO LEDs are far less expensive than those for gallium nitride LEDs. In the future, Wang expects to cut costs even further by making p-type and n-type ZnO nanowires from solution.
For years, researchers have been making electron-abundant n-type ZnO nanowire crystals from zinc and oxygen. Missing oxygen atoms within the regular ZnO crystal structure create relative overabundances of zinc atoms and give the semiconductors their n-type, conductive properties. The lack of accompanying p-type ZnO nanowires, however, has prevented development of a wide range of ZnO nanodevices.
While high quality p-type ZnO nanowires have not previously been reported, groups have demonstrated p-type conduction in ZnO thin films and made ZnO thin film LEDs. Using ZnO nanowires rather than thin films to make LEDs would be less expensive and could lead to more efficient LEDs, Wang explained.
Having both n- and p-type ZnO nanowires – complementary nanowires – could also be useful in a variety of applications including transistors, spintronics, UV detectors, nanogenerators, and microscopy. In spintronics applications, researchers could use p-type ZnO nanowires to make dilute magnetic semiconductors by doping ZnO with magnetic atoms, such as manganese and cobalt, Wang explained.
Transistors that rely on the semiconducting properties of ZnO are also now on the horizon. "P-type doping in nanowires would make complementary ZnO nanowire transistors possible," said Wang.

(c) www.physorg.com

Sony, Toshiba, NEC Electronics Develop 45nm Chip Platform

Sony, Toshiba and NEC Electronics Corp., said on Thursday they had jointly developed technology to mass produce cutting-edge chips.

The platform developed by the three Japanese companies will be used to make system chips, which combine multiple functions on a sliver of silicon, using 45-nanometre technology, the firms said in a joint press release. This technology was unveiled on December 13 (US Pacific Standard Time) at Session 27.2 of the 2006 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, CA.

Chip makers worldwide are locked in a race to lower production costs on 90-, 65- and 45-nanometre chips, with the smaller circuitry widths allowing more power per chip for complex devices.

The three companies are developing a platform for low-power system chips, to be completed in early 2007.

Toshiba and NEC Electronics are also working to standardize technology to make advanced chips with circuitry width of 45-nanometres or finer with Fujitsu and Renesas Technology Corp.

The key elements of the new platform are a fully renovated MOSFET integration scheme, and a hybrid structure with a low dielectric constant (low-k) film that assures high performance and reliability.

The MOSFET integration process applies strained silicon technology to the transistor, utilizing crystal lattice distortion to induce performance-boosting local strain at key locations. Optimization of the strain boosts transistor performance to a level 30% faster than that achieved in the present generation of technology.

Application of a low-k film in the intermediate metal layer of the chip during the back-end process reduces parasitic capacitance and improves circuit performance. The three partners confirmed a dielectric gate film with an effective 15-year lifetime, a span surpassing the average lifetime of a high performance LSI. They also carried out tests of the platform and proved a layer yield of over 98% for the challenging back-end process, confirming that the technology achieves the reliability essential for mass production.

In addition, the partners have led the industry in applying immersion lithography technology with an ultra-high numerical aperture (NA) of over 1.0 to formation of the transistor node, achieving a cell with an area of 0.248 micron m2 in an ultra high density SRAM. The new cell is the smallest yet achieved.

The three companies are simultaneously developing two 45nm processes -- the current platform, which is ideal for high performance LSIs, as well as a platform for applications with low power consumption requirements, which is expected to be completed in early 2007.

[original post: www.cdrinfo.com]

Researchers speed up healing

By Paula Schleis
Beacon Journal business writer

High-tech UA bandage could be manufactured by 2008, professor says

The first clinical trials of a medical bandage that heals wounds faster concludes this month, bringing two University of Akron researchers closer to commercializing a product years in the making.

Professors Daniel Smith and Darrell Reneker used electricity to spin ultrafine polymer fibers while infusing them with chemicals that open a wound to oxygen.

The treated fibers reduce inflammation, kill bacteria and repair slow-healing wounds faster than conventional methods, Smith said.

The ``nanofiber bandage'' is particularly helpful for diabetics because the dressing releases nitric oxide gas, a natural chemical diabetics don't produce enough of, but one that is crucial for body repair.

As a bonus, the electrospun fibers are inexpensive, lightweight and elastic, and conform to any wound without sticking, he said.

The first human trials are winding up in Colombia. The South American country was chosen because it was easier to find people suffering parasitic lesions, a challenging wound that will highlight the bandage's strengths.

Smith and Reneker hope the results of those trials will win them FDA approval for clinical trials in the United States.

The university has found a Minnesota firm to make the bandages, but is encouraging the company to build the plant here.

The company, which Smith didn't want to identify yet, has a reputation for awarding plants to the areas where the technology is developed. He predicted the bandages will be ready for production by 2008 ``at the latest.''

``The company that makes these dressings will be making tens of millions of them, and that will require a lot of blue-collar workers,'' Smith said. ``And there's a good chance that work will be here.''

The university is working on other ``not-so-sexy'' nanofiber products, Smith said, and it's possible one factory could produce all of them.

The UA effort won a 2006 Innovation Award from NorTech, an economic development organization dedicated to spurring invention in Northeast Ohio.

[original post: www.ohio.com]