Researchers at the Fermilab-led SQMS Center in Batavia, Illinois, have completed a first-of-its-kind study linking materials and their structures, including surfaces, interfaces, and geometries, to variations in quantum device performance.
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3D-Micromac AG, Germany, highlighted its microPREP L laser-based sample preparation system for advanced semiconductor packaging failure analysis and quality assurance, enabling targeted defect access across samples ranging from individual dies to full 300-mm wafers and system-level boards.
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Synopsys, Sunnyvale, Calif., and OpenAI, San Francisco, Calif., have partnered to bring together OpenAI’s advanced AI capabilities with Synopsys’ industry-leading electronic design automation tools and agentic AI capabilities to revolutionize the design of semiconductors.
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Hamamatsu Photonics, Japan, developed the iPHEMOS-DDX, an inverted emission microscope designed for failure analysis of advanced semiconductor packages, including AI chiplets, high bandwidth memory, 2.5D/3D packages, and large-scale semiconductor packages.
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Both the tungsten and silicon types of shock-resisting tool steel resist softening during tempering to a greater degree than carbon tool steels. Secondary hardening does not occur in these steels, except to a minimal degree in some high-W or high-Mo compositions (e.g., S5 and S7). The effect of tempering temperature on the hardness of various types and compositions of S steels is shown in Fig. 6.
Tools made of shock-resisting steel should be tempered immediately after quenching, or cracking is likely, especially if they are quenched in water or brine. Ideally, quenched tools should reach 50 to 70 °C (120 to 160 °F) before tempering begins. Some tool records indicate that double tempering is beneficial for S steels. It is especially important where higher toughness is required, for large parts (>50 mm, or 2 in.), and for the higher-alloyed grades (e.g., S5 or S7).
Surface treatments such as carburizing and carbonitriding are often applied to S1 steel. Types S4 and S5 do not take an effective carburized case.
For more information, click on the link below (subscription required). Then scroll to Figure 6.
Rafael Agnelli Mesquita; Reinhold Schneider; Cristiane Sales Gonçalves, Heat Treating of Cold-Work Tool Steels — Low- and Un-Alloyed Water and Oil Hardening Steels, ASM International, 2014. https://doi.org/10.31399/asm.hb.v04d.a0005972
Lighteum Medical, San Diego, California, a manufacturer of precision medical components including high-complexity nitinol-based solutions, appointed Gaurav Agarwal as chief executive officer.
Agarwal has nearly 30 years of leadership experience across medical devices, diagnostics, and healthcare technology, including involvement in more than $15 billion in M&A transactions and $11 billion in private equity dispositions. He most recently served as president and CEO of Capsa Healthcare, where the company delivered more than 20% revenue and EBITDA growth in 18 months and completed two tuck-in acquisitions. He previously served as president and CEO of Vyaire Medical and held senior positions at Acelity/KCI, Smith & Nephew, and GE Healthcare. At Acelity/KCI, he led global commercial roles during the company’s $6.725 billion sale to 3M.
“Gaurav is an accomplished medtech leader and proven growth-oriented operator with a track record of building high-performing organizations and driving results,” said Gregory T. Lucier, chairman of the board.
“I am excited to join Lighteum Medical and advance our mission of providing precision-engineered solutions that enable life-enhancing, minimally invasive medical devices,” said Agarwal.
Lighteum Medical, a Montagu portfolio company, was formed by combining Medical Device Components LLC and Lighteum LLC. The company specializes in platinum group metals and nitinol components and applies expertise in metallurgy, micromachining, femtosecond laser processing, shape setting, and electropolishing. It operates manufacturing centers in San Diego and Oceanside, California; Mexicali, Mexico; and Tullamarine, Australia.
Read further here: https://qmed.com/lighteum-medical-appoints-gaurav-agarwal-as-chief-news129923.html
Axel Johnson Inc. (AJI), New York, acquired full ownership of Fort Wayne Metals Research Products LLC, Fort Wayne, Indiana, from the Glaze family. AJI first invested in the company in 2021.
Founded in 1970, Fort Wayne Metals develops and manufactures high-performance precision materials for medical devices and other critical applications, supporting millions of medical procedures each year. The company will remain headquartered in Fort Wayne, where it has operated for more than 50 years.
Jeremy Rohrs continues as president and CEO of Fort Wayne Metals.
“Today marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Fort Wayne Metals and AJI,” said Sara Greenstein, CEO, Axel Johnson Inc.
“This milestone represents an exciting opportunity for our employees, customers, and partners,” said Rohrs.
The transition completes a partnership that began five years ago and places Fort Wayne Metals fully within AJI’s portfolio of long-term holdings. AJI, founded in 1920 and headquartered in New York City, is a family-owned investment company that builds businesses through long-term ownership partnerships. It employs more than 5,500 people and is part of the Axel Johnson Group, which has about 40,000 employees.
Fort Wayne Metals is a supplier of precision wire and materials to the medical device industry, with a long history of innovation and quality in materials for medical and industrial applications.
Read further here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260701588723/en/Fort-Wayne-Metals-Joins-Axel-Johnson-Inc.-in-Full-Ownership-Transition
Pressio Spine announced the successful completion of the first surgical cases using its Continuum compression staple, a superelastic nitinol fixation system for single-level anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF).
The Continuum staple is engineered to provide continuous compression across the fusion site. It uses an in-line spinal positioning design with a streamlined placement technique and is supplied as a fully sterile, single-use instrument kit.
The initial cases were performed by Dr. Daniel Leas of Carolina Neurosurgery and Spine Associates.
“The nitinol compression is doing real work immediately,” said Leas. “I don’t have to think about screw angles or trajectories or multi-step fixation protocols.”
Conventional anterior cervical fixation typically relies on plates and screws placed in multiple steps. Pressio Spine positions Continuum as an alternative in which the superelastic nitinol actively maintains load on the graft after placement.
“Continuum changes that entirely,” said Kent Ellington, CEO, Pressio Spine. “The nitinol compression is actively working, continuously supporting the fusion site.”
The staple is designed for use alongside the company’s Tidal cervical fusion cage, a 3D-printed titanium cage with 80% porosity and a threaded design for rotational stability.
Pressio Spine develops spine surgery technologies intended to bridge clinical potential and patient outcomes in modern operating environments.
Read further here: https://www.financialcontent.com/article/bizwire-2026-9-15-pressio-spine-announces-successful-completion-of-initial-continuum-cases
Quasar Medical, a global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) for minimally invasive medical devices, acquired the Nitinol Design and Development Center in San Diego, California, from Medres International.
The 10,000-sq-ft center, established in 2024, provides nitinol design, development, process engineering, and precision manufacturing for minimally invasive devices. Its capabilities include laser cutting, shape setting, and electropolishing. The acquisition brings dedicated nitinol operations and engineering staff to Quasar and adds design, prototyping, and process optimization capabilities.
The center is about an hour’s drive from Quasar’s facility in Tecate, Mexico, and will have access to the company’s global manufacturing network of 11 locations. Integration will be overseen by Christine Trepanier, senior vice president of technology at Quasar Medical, with Tom Duerig, who introduced nitinol to medical devices as founder of NDC, serving as senior advisor.
“Nitinol is a foundational technology for many of today’s most advanced devices, both in minimally invasive disposables and implantables,” said Alex Wallstein, CEO, Quasar Medical. “This is a significant upgrade of Quasar to a whole new level of expertise.”
“We are confident that under the stewardship of Quasar, the Nitinol Center in San Diego will thrive with dramatically increased resources and customer reach to achieve its full potential,” said Dr. Chris Cheng, CEO and chairman, Medres International.
Quasar Medical has more than 38 years of experience, about 5,000 employees, and 11 locations. The ISO 13485:2016-certified company supplies catheters, balloons, steerable systems, nitinol technologies, electromagnetic sensors, and complex assemblies.
Read further here: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/quasar-medical-acquires-nitinol-design-and-development-center-302839603.html
Can-Eng Furnaces International, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, was awarded a contract to design and supply a high-temperature plate processing austenitizing furnace system. The system will produce critical wear components used in ground-engaging equipment that operates in severe service conditions. The customer was not named.
Austenitizing is the high-temperature step that precedes quenching when hardening steel. The new system is designed to provide precise temperature control, metallurgical consistency, and production capacity for heavy-duty applications.
The furnace uses an air-cooled walking beam design that allows waste heat to be recovered and used as part of the building’s heating system. Engineered to accommodate plates up to 8 ft (2.44 m) wide, the walking beam configuration minimizes product distortion while providing reliable material handling throughout the heat treatment cycle.
Thermal input is supplied by direct-fired, auto-recuperative burners, which provide efficient heat transfer while reducing fuel consumption. Furnace combustion, process control, and walking beam motion are integrated through a Siemens S7-1500F programmable logic controller.
Can-Eng has more than 60 years of experience designing and manufacturing walking beam furnace systems for customers worldwide. The ISO 9001:2015-certified company supplies thermal processing systems for steel, aluminum, and other metals.
Read further here: https://www.can-eng.com/news/can-eng-has-been-awarded-a-contract-to-design-and-supply-a-high-temperature-plate-processing-austenitizing-furnace-system
Hiperbaric, Burgos, Spain, will supply TTT Group, a Spanish provider of heat treatment and surface coating services, with a Hiperbaric HIP 107 hot isostatic pressing system. It is the first HIP system built with Spanish technology to be sold in Spain, and it will allow TTT to launch a new HIP business unit serving the aerospace, defense, energy, and oil and gas sectors.
The HIP 107 post-processes critical metal components, particularly castings and additively manufactured parts, to eliminate internal porosity and improve fatigue life, ductility, and other mechanical properties. It operates at pressures up to 2,000 bar (29,000 psi) and temperatures up to 1,400°C (2,550°F), with an option to reach 2,000°C (3,630°F). Its Fast Cooling technology combines heat treatment and material consolidation in a single step, reducing energy costs and cycle times.
“We are immensely proud that our first HIP system installed in Spain is being deployed by a leader like TTT Group,” said Andrés Hernando, CEO, Hiperbaric.
“This operation represents the largest investment in our company’s 65-year history,” said Xabier Berasategi, CEO, TTT Group. “With this equipment, we not only eliminate microscopic internal pores in mechanical parts to ensure their extreme fatigue resistance, but we also provide the market with a comprehensive competitive advantage: heat treatments and HIP densification under one roof.”
The order follows Hiperbaric’s sale of its first HIP system to Plus Metal, Taiwan, last year. Founded in 1999, Hiperbaric designs and manufactures high-pressure processing equipment for the food and beverage industry, HIP systems for industrial components, and high-pressure hydrogen compression systems. It also operates the first HIP Innovation Center in Southern Europe.
Read further here: https://www.hiperbaric.com/en/hiperbaric-suministra-primer-equipo-hip-en-espana-a-la-guipuzcoana-ttt-group-nueva-unidad-de-negocio/
Aichelin, Mödling, Austria, delivered, installed, and commissioned a vacuum heat treatment system for Ayhan Takım Çelik A.Ş., a Türkiye-based provider of tool steels and technical materials. The investment expands the customer’s heat treatment capabilities for premium tool steels, particularly for demanding aluminum extrusion and die-casting applications.
The installation consists of a vacuum gas-quenching furnace with 10-bar nitrogen quenching and a vacuum tempering furnace. It handles batch weights of up to 1,500 kg (3,300 lb) and combines oxidation-free heat treatment with precise temperature control, providing good surface quality and highly reproducible process results.
Following commissioning and final acceptance, the system has been fully integrated into the customer’s production environment. The two companies worked together through the engineering, manufacturing, installation, and startup phases.
“The new Aichelin system offers the precision and reliability we need,” said Ayhan Dere, CEO, Ayhan Takım Çelik. The company continuously invests in technologies that strengthen production capacity, meet high quality standards, and support its long-term growth strategy.
Andaç Güzel, director, AICHELIN ST Vakum Fırınları A.Ş., said the project combines proven vacuum technology with process reliability and energy efficiency.
The Aichelin Group designs and builds industrial furnace systems for the heat treatment of metals and supplies vacuum heat treatment solutions for high-performance tool steels to customers worldwide.
Read further here: https://prozesswaerme.net/stahl/aichelin-liefert-leistungsstarke-vakuum-waermebehandlungsanlage-an-ayhan-takim-celik/
SECO/WARWICK, Świebodzin, Poland, received a repeat order for a Vector single-chamber vacuum furnace from a Chinese manufacturer of gas turbine and aircraft engine components. The furnace will heat treat turbine blades made from high-temperature alloys.
The order follows a vacuum furnace with a graphite hot zone that SECO/WARWICK delivered to the same customer in 2023. Based on that unit’s performance, the customer ordered a more technically demanding version for its turbine blade work.
The customer’s process required capabilities beyond the standard Vector configuration: gas cooling at up to 12 bar instead of the standard 10 bar, and temperature uniformity of ±3°C (±5.4°F) instead of ±5°C (±9°F). The furnace operates at temperatures up to 1,400°C (2,550°F), handles a maximum gross load of 600 kg (1,300 lb), and maintains vacuum levels of 10⁻³ Pa to minimize oxidation. It uses an all-metal hot zone rather than graphite, which the company notes is particularly important in processes that require a highly clean environment.
“In this project, the key was to combine two things: the proven design of the Vector vacuum furnace and a very specific adaptation to the customer’s process,” said Maciej Korecki, vice president of the vacuum segment, SECO/WARWICK Group.
Pan Gaojun, managing director, SECO/WARWICK China, said, “The first unit we delivered to this partner proved its value in everyday production. That is why the order was repeated.”
SECO/WARWICK Group designs and manufactures vacuum, atmosphere, and aluminum heat treatment furnaces and vacuum metallurgy equipment, with operations in Poland, the U.S., China, and India.
Read further here: https://www.secowarwick.com/en/news/another-vector-for-turbines/
Thermo Fisher Scientific (Waltham, Mass.) recently launched the Thermo Scientific Nicolet RaptIR X FTIR Microscope. The new equipment is the latest advancement in FTIR microscopy designed to make chemical analysis of microscopic samples more accessible, intuitive and efficient for laboratories.
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A first-of-its-kind instrument at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton, N.Y.) combines four imaging techniques into one experimental setup, enabling comprehensive studies of materials for next-generation nuclear reactors.
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Coordinated by Fraunhofer IWES, Germany, the joint research project SeaEly investigated the direct electrolysis of seawater and brackish water to produce hydrogen and oxygen
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Ritchey Design, Reno, Nev., has recalled approximately 775 carbon fiber bicycle forks and framesets after finding that an alloy crown insert can come loose, posing fall and crash hazards to riders.
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ATA Associates, Houston, Texas, has expanded its ATA Critical Event Services from three to more than 20 partner organizations to meet rising demand for oil and gas incident response.
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Researchers in Switzerland at Empa and Terra Quantum have developed a machine learning model that compresses 3D laser welding simulation times from hours to milliseconds, enabling real-time process control.
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Researchers have created a cobalt-based thin film that could offer a lower-cost approach to developing materials for quantum research. By adding about 4% cobalt to sodium antimonate, scientists created localized honeycomb structures that produce strong magnetic interactions associated with Kitaev-type quantum materials without disrupting the material’s larger crystal structure.
Kitaev materials are studied because some may support quantum spin liquids, unusual states in which atomic spins remain dynamic instead of settling into conventional magnetic order. Research has often relied on compounds containing scarce metals such as ruthenium and iridium.
“Previous work in this area has largely been limited to rare metals like ruthenium and iridium,” says lead author Hao-Bo Li. “We asked whether cobalt, one of the most common transition metals on Earth, could be made to form the same honeycomb structure and display the same intriguing physics.”
Microscopy confirmed that the cobalt atoms clustered into the predicted honeycomb motifs without creating unwanted secondary phases.
“What excites us is that these cobalt honeycombs appear to form naturally, without any special coaxing,” explains senior author Hidekazu Tanaka. “They even produce a clear magnetic signal that matches what theory predicts for this type of structure.”
Magnetic measurements showed a ferromagnetic-like state near 88 K, or about minus 301 degrees Fahrenheit. Calculations indicate that this behavior comes from the local arrangement of cobalt atoms within the CoO6 structures.
The material has not been shown to host a quantum spin liquid, but it provides a cobalt-based system for studying Kitaev-type magnetism without relying on rare metals.
“Cobalt is relatively cheap, widely available, and already used in semiconductor manufacturing,” remarks Li. “This approach could eventually lead to quantum computing components that are far more practical to produce at scale.”
The researchers are now working to further engineer the material and test its quantum properties in greater detail.
For more information: Physical Review Materials
Altermagnets are a recently described class of materials that have no net magnetization but display magnetic-like electron behavior. Their unique properties could support advances in spintronics, which uses electron spin to develop faster, more efficient electronics. Because altermagnets do not produce stray magnetic fields, they could also allow devices to be placed closer together without interference.
“Ferromagnetism produces the behavior most people associate with everyday magnets,” said senior author University of Central Florida’s Professor Madhab Neupane and colleagues.
“In these materials, magnetic moments align in the same direction, creating a magnetic field. That property can be useful in electronics, but the resulting stray magnetic fields can interfere with nearby components.”
“Antiferromagnets behave differently. Their magnetic moments point in opposing directions and cancel one another out, largely avoiding the stray fields. However, they lack some of the useful electronic properties found in ferromagnets.”
“Altermagnets offer another possibility by combining desirable characteristics of both,” they added.
“Like antiferromagnets, they can avoid producing unwanted stray magnetic fields. But they can also generate and detect spin currents — the movement of electron spins through a material — that researchers hope to use for future electronics.”
In the study, the researchers used a technique called angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, which maps how electrons move inside a crystal, including measurements that distinguish between spin ‘up’ and spin ‘down’ electrons.
They first detected a characteristic splitting in the electronic bands of Co1/4TaSe2.
They then used spin-resolved angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to take a closer look and found that those split states carried opposite spin polarizations, key evidence of altermagnetism.
“The significance became clear once the experimental measurements consistently matched our theoretical predictions,” Professor Neupane said.
“Seeing those independent pieces of evidence converge gave us confidence that we had identified a genuine layered altermagnet.”
According to the scientists, the material is distinctive because it is a layered, van der Waals crystal, which could make it easier to combine with other exotic materials, such as superconductors, in layered devices.
Other altermagnet candidates studied so far, mainly manganese telluride and chromium antimonide, are not layered in this way.
“Evidence for altermagnetism in a versatile materials platform opens a lot of new possibilities,” said first author Milo Sprague, also from the University of Central Florida.
“There’s currently a lot of debate in altermagnetic theory about how the spin-polarized electronic states interact with other magnetic phenomena.”
“Now we have a material that we can easily modify to explore these new questions.”
For more information: Nature Communications
Image: Establishment of altermagnetic crystal and magnetic structure in Co1/4TaSe2. Image credit: Sprague et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-76784-x.
Grouse Fibre is developing ways to transform casein, the main protein in milk, into technical fibers and other advanced materials. The work aims to create value from dairy by-products while supporting a more sustainable, circular economy. Based at SRUC’s Barony Campus in Dumfries, the company has access to specialized laboratories, processing equipment and fresh milk for its research.
The project brought together dairy science and advanced materials engineering. Each day began with fresh milk collected directly from the farm before being processed in the Dairy Research and Innovation Centre, where the milk was separated and the casein recovered. The protein was then refined and tested as the raw material for Grouse Fibre’s fiber-forming technology.
Over the course of the project, the team progressed from laboratory trials to producing casein-based materials at kilogram scale, demonstrating the commercial potential of the technology.
Since completing the Digital Dairy Chain project, Grouse Fibre has continued developing its fibers for technical applications with support from Scottish Enterprise and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
Dr Tom O’Haire, CEO of Grouse Fibre, said, “The Digital Dairy Chain project has been catalytic for us. The funding enabled our research and unlocked a collaboration with SRUC that has been fundamental to our progress. Exposure to the dairy expertise on campus has allowed us to make significant leaps forward. Access to the Maker Space and laboratory facilities at the Dairy Research and Innovation Centre has provided such an advantage that we have extended our presence beyond the project.”
The collaboration is one example of how SRUC is helping businesses develop innovative products that add value to the dairy sector while supporting sustainable economic growth.
The project also highlights the role of SRUC’s innovation facilities in bringing together researchers and industry to accelerate the development of new technologies. This collaborative approach will continue through SRUC’s Innovation Centre approach, which spans the whole of Scotland, providing businesses with opportunities to access specialist expertise, facilities and partnerships to develop new products and processes.
Dante Coulton, Process Engineer at Grouse Fibre and Technical Lead of the DDC project, said, “Working on the Digital Dairy Chain project with SRUC gave us access to high-quality dairy processing and laboratory equipment, as well as the expertise needed to make the most of it. This was a key factor in the project’s success and led to new ideas and innovative processes that have significantly transformed our production methods and strengthened our expertise in casein and fiber production. It also provided valuable insights into our proteins, from the macro to the micro scale, opening up exciting new opportunities for the future of our business.”
The project was awarded £175,000 as part of the Digital Dairy Chain Collaborative Research and Development Grant Competition, which supports businesses developing innovative solutions for the dairy industry.
Grouse Fibre’s project focused on biorefining waste milk from the dairy industry to create casein-based fibrous materials with multiple use cases ranging from high value technical applications, textile fibers and even as an additive in horticultural growing media
Led by SRUC, the Digital Dairy Chain is transforming the dairy supply chain through innovation, collaboration and business growth across Cumbria and south and west Scotland.
The five-year program is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through its flagship Strength in Places Fund, with £21 million awarded to help transform the regional dairy sector and strengthen the rural economy.
The program supports businesses across the dairy supply chain through collaborative research, innovation funding, skills development and access to specialist facilities, helping bring new ideas from concept to commercial reality.
For more information: Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC)
Image: Grouse Fibre has been converting protein found in milk into technical fibers.
Researchers have developed a technique that uses powdered eggshells to produce high-quality magnesium alloys for automotive, aerospace and biomedical applications. The approach offers a low-cost, more sustainable alternative to conventional calcium materials, which require energy-intensive processing from ore.
“For example, calcium carbonate and calcium oxide are important materials for manufacturing metal alloys,” says Bharat Gwalani, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at North Carolina State University. “But producing those calcium materials relies on a complex process making use of mined materials. We’ve demonstrated a technique that allows us to skip a step. Rather than processing ore to make calcium materials and then using those materials to produce metals or metal alloys, we’ve shown that you can produce a high-quality metal alloy using eggshells.”
Eggshells are 95% calcium carbonate, and the process the researchers use to incorporate the eggshell into alloys converts it into calcium oxide and nascent calcium.
“There are many benefits to this,” Gwalani says. “There are fewer steps. You have a reliable, sustainable supply chain. Eggshells are inexpensive. And you use far less energy, because you do not have to go through the process of creating calcium products from ore.”
For this proof-of-concept work, the researchers used eggshells to produce stronger, harder magnesium alloys, which have a combination of strength and weight that makes them useful for things like electronics and aerospace equipment.
“Calcium is added to magnesium to improve its mechanical properties,” says Gwalani. “We wanted to see if we could use biogenic waste – eggshells – to produce the necessary calcium materials during the manufacturing process.”
For this process, the researchers begin by drilling a series of evenly spaced holes into a cylindrical block of magnesium. Those holes are then filled with finely ground eggshells. This block is then placed into a steel cylinder. A steel mandrel with a hole in the center is then lowered into the cylinder. The mandrel essentially serves as a pestle in a mortar, pressing down on the magnesium block and spinning at 300 rotations per minute.
This process is called friction stir extrusion. As the mandrel presses down and spins, several things happen at about the same time. The eggshell powder is mixed into the surrounding magnesium, creating friction between the particles of eggshell and the metal. This friction converts the calcium carbonate into calcium oxide and calcium – and produces the high-strength alloy Mg2Ca. Lastly, the downward pressure of the mandrel forces the magnesium alloy out through the hole, producing an extruded rod of the finished product.
“This work shows that you can produce high-value, high-quality magnesium alloys using an inexpensive, sustainable, biogenic waste material,” says Gwalani. “This is a scalable, energy-efficient, and environmentally responsible way to produce magnesium-based composites using biogenic waste materials.
“And we’ve already demonstrated that this approach has applications beyond magnesium and eggshells,” Gwalani says. “We demonstrated earlier this year that you can use the same approach – friction stir extrusion – to produce magnetic composites by grinding magnetic samarium-cobalt (SmCo5) powder into scrap aluminum.”
For more information: Journal of Magnesium and Alloys
Photo credit: Bharat Gwalani.
The Elmet Group Co., Portland, Maine, has agreed to acquire ams OSRAM’s tungsten and molybdenum operations in Schwabmünchen, Germany, establishing its first EU production footprint for refractory metal components.
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GE Aerospace, Evendale, OH, announced a $225 million investment to modernize the GE Aerospace Research Center in Niskayuna, NY, advancing the site’s legacy as the innovation engine behind breakthroughs in aviation advancements.
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AML3D Limited, Australia, is participating in a AUD $3.9 million, three-year R&D project with an aerospace prime to qualify its Wire-Arc Additive Manufacturing technology for producing aerospace tooling.
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Bodycote, U.K., has invested more than $30 million across two facilities in Ohio, expanding its capacity and capabilities in response to growing demand from aerospace and defense manufacturers in the region.
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The following is a discussion of considerations for substrate preparation, part configuration, and coating location.
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Researchers at four Austrian universities, TU Wien, University of Vienna, JKU Linz, and the University of Innsbruck, have developed a new approach connecting an electron microscope to a quantum computer to process quantum information carried by electrons.
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A working transistor requires an extremely thin insulating layer known as the gate dielectric. This layer sits above the semiconductor and helps control the movement of electrons. As transistors shrink, making this insulating layer thinner can improve electrical control. The difficulty is that adding such layers to atomically thin semiconductors can disturb the delicate interface between the materials. That disruption can scatter electrons and erase some of the performance gains engineers are trying to achieve.
For years, researchers have therefore faced a difficult tradeoff. They could strengthen control over the transistor gate, or they could protect the mobility of the charge carriers moving through the device. Achieving both at once has been much harder.
Researchers at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU), Taiwan, working with TSMC Corporate Research, Taiwan, have now demonstrated a new way to address this problem by focusing on the interface itself.
The work, published in Nature Electronics, shows that carefully controlling the atomic boundary between a semiconductor and its insulating layer can allow the dielectric to be made extremely thin while maintaining strong electrical performance. Rather than searching for a completely different semiconductor, the researchers concentrated on the narrow region where the two materials meet, an area only a few atoms thick.
Instead of changing either the semiconductor or the gate dielectric, the NYCU researchers redesigned the interface connecting them.
The team first placed an ultrathin epitaxial aluminum layer directly onto monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). They then carefully oxidized the aluminum, producing an aluminum oxide layer about 0.42 nanometers thick. After that, they added the high κ hafnium oxide gate dielectric.
Despite being only a fraction of a nanometer thick, the engineered interface performs two important jobs.
First, it creates a smooth and continuous surface that allows the hafnium oxide to grow more uniformly over the MoS2. Second, it works as an atomic buffer that limits unwanted electrical interactions between the dielectric and the semiconductor. This protection helps electrons continue moving efficiently through the transistor channel.
In this design, the interface does more than simply keep two materials apart. It becomes a functional part of the transistor and helps the materials work together more effectively.
Using the new interface design, the researchers fabricated short-channel top-gate transistors from CVD-grown monolayer MoS2. The devices had an equivalent oxide thickness of roughly one nanometer.
Testing showed low leakage current, minimal hysteresis, and maximum transconductance of 0.45 mS μm-1 in transistors with channels measuring about 100 nanometers.
More importantly, the devices demonstrated a combination that has been difficult to achieve in atomically thin transistors: very thin dielectric scaling, strong electrostatic control, and sustained carrier transport.
Because the researchers used CVD-grown monolayer MoS2 rather than mechanically exfoliated flakes, they believe the approach brings the technology closer to materials and processes that could eventually be suitable for wafer-scale manufacturing.
The findings also point to a broader change in the way semiconductor researchers think about transistor design.
For decades, much of the effort to improve transistors has centered on discovering better semiconductor materials or making devices smaller. As transistor components approach atomic dimensions, however, the interfaces separating different materials become increasingly important.
These regions may be only a few atoms thick, yet they can strongly influence how well the materials on either side work together. The new results add to growing evidence that controlling these atomic interfaces could become as important as developing new semiconductor materials themselves.
Image – Researchers from NYCU and TSMC show that redefining the atomic boundary between materials can address a major engineering barrier restricting the development of next-generation semiconductor devices. Courtesy of: Springer Nature.
For more information:
National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
https://www.nycu.edu.tw/nycu/en/index
