New York’s Marcy Nanocenter to become site for 450-mm computer chip manufacturing

SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), Albany, N.Y.;  and Mohawk Valley EDGE, Utica, N.Y., announce an expanded partnership through which CNSE will lead development of the Marcy Nanocenter site by serving as the site end user.  The partnership is designed to accelerate the attraction of next-generation 450-mm computer chip manufacturing to the Mohawk Valley by deploying a public-private partnership model similar to the CNSE Global 450-mm Consortium (G450C).   The $4.

Solar Atmospheres donates heat treating vacuum furnace to ASM International

Solar Atmospheres Inc., Souderton, Pa., has designed and built a lab-size, horizontal, internal quenching furnace that it donated to ASM International for its Teaching Lab. Named “The Mentor,” this $250,000 gift was made by Solar in commemoration of ASM International’s 100th anniversary. The furnace was dedicated in an official ribbon-cutting ceremony at ASM headquarters in Materials Park, Ohio.   “The Mentor” has a hot zone that measures 12 in. wide by 12 in. high by 18 in.

Twisted light could give bandwidth an upgrade

A new fiber optic technology has the potential to dramatically boost bandwidth for Internet users and providers. Widely studied in molecular biology, atomic physics, and quantum optics, optical vortices (also known as orbital angular momentum, or OAM, beams) were thought to be unstable in fiber, until Siddharth Ramachandran, an engineering professor at Boston University, recently designed an optical fiber that can propagate them.

Nanovolcanoes for drug delivery

Researchers from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, developed a method for creating “nanovolcanoes” by shining various colors of light through a nanoscale “crystal ball” made of a synthetic polymer. These nanovolcanoes can store precise amounts of other materials and hold promise for new drug-delivery technologies.   The nanovolcanoes are created by placing spherical, transparent polymer nanoparticles directly onto the flat surface of a thin film.