Science

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Fundamental Chemistry Findings Could Help Extend Moore’s Law: A Berkeley Lab-Intel collaboration outlines the chemistry of photoresist, enabling smaller features for future generations of microprocessors

Over the years, computer chips have gotten smaller thanks to advances in materials science and manufacturing technologies. This march of progress, the doubling of transistors on a microprocessor roughly every two years, is called Moore's Law. But there's one component of the chip-making process in need of an overhaul if Moore's law is to continue: the chemical mixture called photoresist. Similar to film used in photography, photoresist, also just called resist, is used to lay down the patterns of ever-shrinking lines and features on a chip.

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When a low concentrations of crosslinker is added to resist (left), it is able to pattern smaller features and doesn’t require longer, expensive exposures as with a high concentrations of crosslinker (right).

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CIQUS researchers develop an extremely simple procedure to obtain nanosized graphenes

The prestigious journal Angewandte Chemie (link is external) has recently published a work by CiQUS researchers (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain) in collaboration with IBM Research - Zurich (Switzerland), which describes an extremely simple method to obtain high quality nanographenes from easily available organic compounds.

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Atomic force microscopy (AFM) image of a clover-shaped nanographenes

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NASA Turns Over Next-Generation Air Traffic Management Tool to Federal Aviation Administration

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As seen in this image, Terminal Sequencing and Spacing technology enables air traffic controllers to better manage the spacing between aircraft as they save both time and fuel and reducing emissions, flying more efficient approaches into airports.

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Looking Back at the Jupiter Crash 20 Years Later

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NASA's Galileo spacecraft captured these four views of Jupiter as the last of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's large fragments struck the planet.

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NASA Rover's Images Show Laser Flash on Martian Rock

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Adopting the euro: criteria, decision-making and the next countries in line

The euro zone could get bigger next year. After the European Commission said Lithuania was ready to adopt the common currency, the Parliament will vote on its opinion on 16 July. The final decision will be made by the Council at the end of July. Read on to find out how countries are assessed to see if they are ready to join the euro zone.

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Researchers discover boron 'buckyball'

The discovery of buckyballs — soccer-ball-shaped molecules of carbon — helped usher in the nanotechnology era. Now, Lai-Sheng Wang's research group and colleagues from China have shown that boron, carbon's neighbor on the periodic table, can form a cage-like molecule similar to the buckyball. Until now, such a boron structure had only been a theoretical speculation. The researchers dubbed their newfound nanostructure "borospherene."

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The carbon buckyball has a boron cousin. A cluster for 40 boron atoms forms a hollow cage-like molecule.

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Labs characterize carbon for batteries: Rice, Lawrence Livermore scientists calculate materials’ potential for use as electrodes

Lithium-ion batteries could benefit from a theoretical model created at Rice University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that predicts how carbon components will perform as electrodes.

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New work by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Rice University details the binding properties of lithium ions to various types of carbon that may be used for lithium-ion batteries. The “universal descriptor” they found has the potential to speed the development of materials for commercialization.

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Sun-like Stars Reveal Their Ages

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Researchers Use Various Zinc Oxide Nanostructures to Boost Efficiency of Water Purification Process

An Iranian researcher in association with Swedish scientists studied the use of various nanostructures of zinc oxide in the improvement of the removal of industrial pollutants from water and the differences in their efficiencies.

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