https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from IMEC At this year's IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2025), imec, a research and innovation hub in advanced semiconductor technologies, presents the first successful wafer-scale fabrication of solid-state nanopores using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Solid-state nanopores are emerging as powerful tools for molecular sensing but haven't been commercialized yet. This proof of concept is a crucial step toward their cost-effective (mass) production. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-wafer-scale-solid-state-nanopores.html Nanophysics Wed, 17 Dec 2025 17:50:04 EST news685198781 This week, at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2025), imec, a research and innovation hub in advanced semiconductor technologies, successfully demonstrated the integration of colloidal quantum dot photodiodes (QDPDs) on metasurfaces developed on its 300 mm CMOS pilot line. This pioneering approach enables a scalable platform for the development of compact, miniaturized shortwave infrared (SWIR) spectral sensors, setting a new standard for cost-effective and high-resolution spectral imaging solutions. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-colloidal-quantum-dot-photodiodes-metasurfaces.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 11 Dec 2025 16:06:21 EST news684691561 At 4 degrees Kelvin, most electro-optic materials falter. Nanoelectronics R&D center imec has now successfully engineered thin-film strontium titanate (SrTiO₃) that delivers record electro-optic performance with low optical loss, pointing to shorter, faster building blocks for quantum devices. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-thin-strontium-titanate-electro-optic.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 04 Nov 2025 11:20:04 EST news681477601 Imec researchers have set a new benchmark in RF transistor performance for mobile applications. They present a gallium nitride (GaN) MOSHEMT (metal-oxide-semiconductor high-electron-mobility transistor) on silicon (Si) that achieves both record efficiency and output power for an enhancement-mode (E-mode) device operating at low supply voltage. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-06-rf-gan-si-transistor-high.html Electronics & Semiconductors Thu, 12 Jun 2025 03:30:02 EDT news668875081 At the 2025 Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits, imec, a research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, and IDLab, an imec research group at Ghent University and the University of Antwerp, Belgium, announced a significant breakthrough in high-speed digital-to-analog conversion. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-06-high-dac-paves-faster-energy.html Hardware Wed, 11 Jun 2025 11:56:03 EDT news668861761 Researchers have published the demonstration of a fully-integrated single-chip microwave photonics system, combining optical and microwave signal processing on a single silicon chip. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-programmable-solution-higher-wireless-communication.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 05 Jun 2025 12:16:03 EDT news668344561 At the 2025 IEEE International Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC), imec, a research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, has presented Ru lines at 16nm pitch with average resistance as low as 656Ω/µm. The 16nm pitch metal lines were fabricated using a semi-damascene integration flow optimized for cost-effective manufacturability, making it an attractive approach for fabricating the first local interconnect metal layer of the A7 and beyond technology nodes. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-semi-damascene-approach-enables-16nm.html Nanomaterials Thu, 05 Jun 2025 04:10:10 EDT news668315403 Imec, a research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, has announced a significant milestone in silicon photonics with the successful demonstration of electrically driven GaAs-based multi-quantum-well nano-ridge laser diodes fully, monolithically fabricated on 300 mm silicon wafers in its CMOS pilot prototyping line. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-01-silicon-photonics-advance-paves-effective.html Electronics & Semiconductors Tue, 14 Jan 2025 10:00:21 EST news656071216 The journey toward a sustainable future hinges on our ability to harness the power of renewable sources effectively. Solar energy, in particular, has emerged as a cornerstone of this transition. However, the unpredictable and variable nature of sunlight poses a significant challenge for accurately predicting energy yields. This uncertainty not only hampers innovation, but unnecessarily delays the sun's use in global energy production. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-energy-yields-photovoltaic.html Energy & Green Tech Thu, 21 Mar 2024 15:49:05 EDT news630254942 The central (CNS) and peripheral (PNS) nervous system work together to coordinate and regulate the functions of our body in addition to hosting our human intelligence. The CNS is the control center and includes the brain and the spinal cord. While the brain processes information, makes decisions, and sends out instructions, the spinal cord and the associated PNS is the communication highway that carries nerve signals to and from the brain. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-pills-pulses-electrifying-medicine-peripheral.html Neuroscience Thu, 15 Feb 2024 14:49:07 EST news627230941 Imec teamed up with the KU Leuven laboratory of tumor immunology and immunotherapy for the first clinical validation of its cell sorter chip technology. The chip successfully identified PD-1 positive T cells in the blood samples of 15 ovarian cancer patients, matching the accuracy of the established gold standard in cytometry—bulky and costly flow cytometry instruments like FACS. The work has been publsihed in Cells. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-cytometry-chip-revolution-cancer-personalized.html Oncology & Cancer Fri, 02 Feb 2024 10:39:05 EST news626092741 Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have revolutionized modern lighting and sensing technology. From applications in our homes to industry, LEDs are used for all lighting applications, from indoor lighting over TV screens to biomedicine. Widely used organic LEDs (OLEDs) today, for example in smartphone screens, employ organic thin-film materials as a semiconductor. However, their maximum brightness remains limited; just think of trying to read your smartphone screen on a very sunny day. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-perovskite-thousand-brighter-oleds.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 09 Jan 2024 11:01:02 EST news624020461 The first automobile, a marvel of technological innovation, hit the road nearly 150 years ago. Undoubtedly a great achievement—yet one that pales in comparison to the challenges car manufacturers face today. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-automotive-industry-ready-greatest.html Business Tue, 03 Oct 2023 12:44:04 EDT news615555841 The long-term vision for quantum computing is the ability to leverage millions of noise-free qubits to address selected problems that are hard to solve with classical computers. Application fields that may benefit from this technology include materials synthesis, pharmaceutical drug development, and cybersecurity, to name a few. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-upscaling-si-superconducting-based-quantum-technologies.html Superconductivity Wed, 27 Sep 2023 10:24:45 EDT news615029079 Imec, a research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, has presented the successful integration of a pinned photodiode structure in thin-film image sensors. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-thin-film-pinned-photodiode-superior-short-wave-infrared.html Engineering Wed, 16 Aug 2023 12:54:22 EDT news611409257 Hyperspectral cameras split the light reflected by an object into many narrow spectral bands, which they capture and process separately. That way, they record a spectral signature for each pixel in a scene. This signature is much richer than the red-green-blue image that our eyes capture. It may even uniquely identify the material in the picture since each molecule interacts with light in a specific way, resulting in a spectral fingerprint. These unique fingerprints are of excellent value for identifying and classifying all sorts of materials and objects, and they are vital for further automation in industrial processes. It allows us to, e.g., reveal the corrosion on the structural elements of a bridge. https://techxplore.com/news/2022-10-hyperspectral-imaging-chip.html Software Mon, 24 Oct 2022 09:27:04 EDT news585822421 Considering the seismic shocks that our world has endured over the last two years alone, it seems unwise to engage in predictions about what it will look like in ten years or more. https://techxplore.com/news/2022-09-expert-discusses-power-consumption-next-gen.html Telecom Thu, 29 Sep 2022 10:12:13 EDT news583665125 Quantum computers promise to dramatically affect selected application fields, including materials synthesis, pharmaceutical drug development, and cybersecurity—to name a few. https://phys.org/news/2022-08-high-quality-superconducting-qubits-fabricated-cmos-compatible.html Superconductivity Thu, 18 Aug 2022 13:12:21 EDT news580047136 For decades, silicon-based power transistors (MOSFETs, field-effect transistors) formed the backbone of power conversion systems that convert alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC) and vice versa, or DC from low voltage to high voltage and vice versa. In the quest for alternatives that can drive up the switching speed, gallium nitride (GaN) quickly came forward as one of the leading candidate materials. The GaN/AlGaN materials system exhibits a higher electron mobility and higher critical electric field for breakdown. Combined with the high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) architecture, it results in devices and ICs that feature higher breakdown strength, faster switching speed, lower conductance losses and a smaller footprint than comparable silicon solutions. https://techxplore.com/news/2022-03-monolithic-gan-components-boosts-power.html Electronics & Semiconductors Mon, 21 Mar 2022 14:08:53 EDT news567090530 Medical imaging techniques provide a unique view inside the body and are invaluable for diagnosis and disease monitoring. From X-ray, over MRI to ultrasound, the field is vast and diverse. When imaging biological tissue, the choice of the modality depends on the contrast used for imaging and the trade-off between resolution and depth. Light waves, e.g. used in endoscopy or microscopy, can generate high-resolution images but don't travel far unperturbed. Deeper in tissue, the light gets scattered resulting in blurry images. High-energy X-rays form a special case as they penetrate deep into the tissue and yield high-resolution images, but this ionizing radiation limits their use. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-photoacoustics-biomedical-applications.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 17 Feb 2022 07:08:13 EST news564304087 Capacitor-less indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO)-based DRAM cell architectures show great potential for realizing high-density 3D DRAM memories. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-capacitor-less-igzo-based-dram-cell-excellent.html Electronics & Semiconductors Mon, 13 Dec 2021 10:08:43 EST news558612520 3D system-on-chip (3D SOC), enabled by electronic design automation (EDA) and 3D process technologies, is an attractive heterogeneous integration approach for addressing the memory wall in high-performance systems. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-benefits-3d-soc-backside-interconnects-future.html Hardware Mon, 13 Dec 2021 08:36:18 EST news558606974 Magnetic domain wall devices have attracted great attention as a promising beyond-CMOS device concept for functional scaling. The spintronics-based technology could provide a platform where both logic and memory might connect, holding promise for logic-in memory computing as well. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-magnetic-domain-wall-devices-closer.html Hardware Mon, 13 Dec 2021 08:36:10 EST news558606966 The cost of sequencing has gone down tremendously. But still it is not used in daily practice. One of the reasons for this is that the processing of the raw data into useful insights takes a long time (several days for whole genome sequencing) and requires a lot of expensive resources (such as servers that need to be rented in a data center). https://phys.org/news/2021-12-software-optimizations-variant-faster-genome.html Biotechnology Fri, 03 Dec 2021 07:33:15 EST news557739189 Conventional light microscopy has been instrumental for studying cells and microorganisms; fluorescence microscopy enabled visualization of even smaller cell features by selectively adding fluorescent labels to molecules. These microscopes are often comprise bulky and expensive systems that require regular maintenance to keep the lenses aligned. Additionally, they need to strike a compromise between device size, the size of the field of view, and resolution. For scientists to see more detail, larger optical components are required, but this causes the field of view to decrease. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-chip-scale-microscope-high-throughput-fluorescence-imaging.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 23 Nov 2021 11:03:50 EST news556887826 The growing popularity of data-intensive applications, such as cloud services, video streaming, high-performance computing and 5G, poses ever-increasing demands on optical communication networks within data centers. Here, the most performant optical links operate at speeds up to 400Gb/s, using for example 4 x 100Gb/s channels. Data center operators are however forecasting a need for terabit/s capable optical transceivers within a few years from now. In parallel to this evolution, co-packaged paradigms are emerging to help optical switches cope with the massive bandwidth density at their input—soon reaching 100 terabit/s. In these co-packaged optics, Si photonics transceivers are tightly integrated with the high-speed electronic circuits. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-transmitter-ic-architecture-enables-80ghz.html Electronics & Semiconductors Wed, 28 Jul 2021 07:34:57 EDT news546676495 From Augmented Reality games to automatic car locks: Gauging the location of devices is becoming increasingly important in modern life. Except that the precision we demand is far beyond the reach of GPS or Bluetooth. With Ultra-Wideband (UWB) micro-location technology from imec, the location of objects in a space can be pinpointed in minute detail. "Over the coming years, the use of this technology is set to increase dramatically," said Christian Bachmann, imec at Holst Center's Program Manager Ultra-Wideband and Bluetooth Secure Proximity. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-ultra-wideband-micro-location-technology.html Consumer & Gadgets Mon, 26 Jul 2021 09:51:41 EDT news546511899 This week, at the 2021 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits (VLSI 2021), imec, a world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, demonstrated for the first time fully functional integrated forksheet field-effect transistors (FETs) with short-channel control (SSSAT=66-68mV/dec) comparable to gate-all-around (GAA) nanosheet devices down to 22-nm gate length. Dual work function metal gates are integrated at 17-nm spacing between n- and pFETs, highlighting the key benefit of forksheet devices for advanced CMOS area scaling. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-electrical-forksheet-devices-nanosheets-nm.html Electronics & Semiconductors Wed, 16 Jun 2021 09:17:23 EDT news543053841 In April 2020, imec introduced the world's first chip to process radar signals using a spiking recurrent neural network (SNN). Its flagship use-case? The creation of a smart, low-power multi-sensor perception system for drones that identifies obstacles in a matter of milliseconds. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-spiking-neural-network-chip-combines.html Computer Sciences Tue, 01 Jun 2021 08:26:04 EDT news541754758 Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the three so-called trillion-dollar diseases in the world, next to cancer and diabetes. It is expected that in the next 40 years, the number of people diagnosed with AD will triple. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05-alzheimer-disease-eyes-hyperspectral-camera.html Alzheimer's disease & dementia Tue, 18 May 2021 07:16:19 EDT news540540972