Microwave Engineering Europe - September 2008 - (Page 4)

4 NEWS By JP Joosting, Microwave Engineering Europe IN BRIEF RF Nano raises $8 million RF Nano has raised $8 million in Series B venture capital to further develop its carbon nanotube analog electronics technology. Oxantium Ventures joined RF Nano’s series A lead investor Okapi Ventures in the funding round. The start-up’s technology is based on research by Professor Peter Burke at the University of California, Irvine. The company is developing CMOS compatible discrete, wafer and integrated circuit products that take advantage of the electronic properties of carbon nanotubes. RF Nano claims that its carbon nanotube devices have power densities 100 times greater than silicon and 20 times greater than gallium arsenide, plus intrinsic cutoff frequencies in the terahertz range. The company has already developed manufacturing processes and says its carbon nanotubes are inexpensive to grow. It won a United States Air Force Small Business Innovation Research grant to develop an ‘integrated nanotube system’ for use in radio applications earlier this year. www.mwee.com/210101184 Researchers grow nano-scale wire nets for potential electronics and energy harvesting Boston College researchers say they have produced a ﬂexible webbing of nano-scale wires that may eventually be used in electronics and energy harvesting. A team of researchers led by assistant professor of chemistry Dunwei Wang reported growing wires from titanium and silicon into a two-dimensional network of branches that resemble ﬂat, rectangular netting. According to Wang, these “nanonets” are extremely thin but maintain complexity and are capable of efﬁciently carrying an electrical charge. “This is pretty much the ultimate challenge in controlling crystal growth,” Wang said. The structure is two-dimensional and achieves very limited growth in both directions, he said. The researchers reported that the nanonets grew spontaneously from the bottom-up through simple chemical reactions, unprovoked by a catalyst. Working in two dimensions, Wang’s team — including post doctoral researcher Xiaohua Liu and graduate students Sa Zhou and Yongjing Lin — produced a web that under a microscope resembles a tree with all branches growing in the same perpendicular direction from the trunk. Wang said basic nano structures are typically created in zero or one dimension. Wang and his team report on their accomplishment in the international edition of the German Chemical Society journal Angewandte Chemie. Wang described the structure his team grew as one homogenous single crystalline material with many ﬁne features that provide a high amount of surface area. The nanonets can be used for electronics because the creation of nano-scale wires is far beyond what can be achieved with photolithography, he said. Wang said the material showed very good electrical conductivity through high quality connections of the nanonet. Titanium disilicide has been proven to absorb light across a range of the solar spectrum, is easily obtained, and is inexpensive, Wang said. Wang’s team is focusing research for the time being on energy-harvesting applications. The goal is to utilize the high conductivity of the structure and put another layer of material around it to absorb light and allow those electrons to be carried away very efﬁciently by the nanonets, he said. The team plans to stick with titanium and silicon because they are both abundant and relatively inexpensive elements, Wang said. www.mwee.com/210300477 Intel plows more into WiMax technology Intel’s venture capital arm has invested $3 million in Aicent Inc (San Jose, Calif.), with the funds set to be used to accelerate the startup’s 3G and 4G data roaming initiatives, including mobile WiMax. Aicent’s technology builds links between the Interweb and mobile phone networks to allow messages to pass back and forth. It claims to have over a billion mobile subscribers on 100 mobile networks. The company expects to roll out its WiMax technology in the second half of 2009, and is also working on competing technologies such as LTE. Aicent, which has 130 employees, raised $24 million in three previous rounds. Past investors include Warburg Pincus, iGlobe Partners and Qualcomm Ventures. www.mwee.com/210300478 Intel seeks uniﬁed approach to 60 GHz wireless Researchers from Intel Corporation are working on a new approach to gigabit-class wireless networks that would unify existing efforts at 60 GHz. In an effort to engage the industry on the concept, Intel Research will host an open workshop on the topic in October. The effort comes at a time when two groups in the IEEE are clashing over the future of 60 GHz. The 802.15.3c group is developing an early draft of a speciﬁcation aimed at pointto-point links for wireless displays and kiosks. A separate 802.11 study group wants to use 60 GHz to deliver a Gbit/s version of WiFi. “We really believe in a single interoperable solution, but many efforts are focused on point solutions,” said Lilly Yang, an Intel researcher speaking at the Intel Developer Forum (August 19th 2008). Yang sketched out some of Intel’s work on a solution that could deliver more than 4 Gbits/s over 60 GHz for applications ranging from wireless displays to future WiFi networks. The approach would need to embrace uses that span one to ten meters, some requiring line of sight links and others not needed it. “We are talking about a diverse set of requirements for a diverse set of platforms,” Yang said. “We want one interoperable solution to support all these uses,” she said. She described some of Intel’s work on a media access controller that could handle sector sweeping and antenna training and tracking for device discovery. It would also employ spatial frequency reuse. “We need to design almost every aspect of a MAC to make it efﬁcient,” she said. The Intel workshop will be held October 6-7 at Intel Research in Hillsboro, Oregon. www.mwee.com/210300484 Microwave Engineering Europe ● September 2008 ● www.mwee.com 004_MWEE.indd 4 4/09/08 15:26:51 http://www.mwee.com/210300477 http://www.mwee.com/210101184 http://www.mwee.com/210300484 http://www.mwee.com/210300478 http://www.mwee.com

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Microwave Engineering Europe - September 2008 News Contents Comment Cover Feature: Uncovering Test and Measurement’s Role in Advancing LTE and Mobile WiMAX WiMax: WiMax and LTE Need to Address Issues of Backhaul, Cost and Efficiency for Successful Deployment WiMax: Manufacturing Communications Technology Products in India Test and Measurement Mobile Platforms Evolve to Meet Future Demands Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - September 2008

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