2011 Six Electronic New Technologies
A few days ago, Gartner, in the report of a semiconductor technology maturity curve, points out that there are six innovation technologies in 2011; these technologies might be commercial in the next few years. These technologies include Quantum Dot display, cognitive radio, terahertz wave, MEMS display, iron-phosphate-based lithium-ion batteries and 450 mm wafer factory.
Quantum Dots display
Quantum Dots are some naked eye cannot see, extremely small semiconductor nanocrystal, crystals in grain diameter are less than 10 nano. Quantum dot is combined by zinc and cadmium, selenium and sulfur atoms. Quantum dot has distinctive characteristics: when stimulated by electricity or light (such as LED light), it will shine light to produce pure color, the light color it issued is decided by the composition of the quantum dot material and size, shape. The object of quantum dots is to replace the function of OLED.
Cognitive radio
Cognitive radio (CR) core thought is the ability to learn, it can interact the information with the surrounding environment to limit and reduce the occurrence of conflicts by using the available spectrum in the space. CR learning ability is the real reason for it to step into the practical application from concept. Have enough artificial intelligence, it may learn from past experience to have real-time response to the actual situation, the past experiences include dead zone, interference and use model. At present, people have different understanding to CR. Now CR technology is mainly in the initial stage, the theory and technology is in the research of exploration, but it has got the attention from all walks of life, many famous scholars and agencies are devoted to its research, launched a lot of important for the research project. At present, the cognitive radio technology has the brightest prospects in the application. It is reported that cognitive function of the wireless local area network product will be launched in a recent two years, but to really realize CR technology will have to solve including spectrum testing technology, adaptive spectrum resource allocation technology and wireless spectrum management technology.
Terahertz wave
THz unique properties bring far-reaching influence to communication (broadband communication), radar, ECCM, electromagnetic weapons, astronomy and medical imaging, nondestructive testing, safety inspection biochemical areas. Because of the high frequency terahertz, it has high spatial resolution. And because of its pulse is very short, so it has very high time resolution. Terahertz imaging technology terahertz spectrum technologies thus form the two main key technology of terahertz application. At the same time, because of the terahertz energy is small; it will have no damage effect to materials, so it has more advantages than X-ray. In addition, the biological macromolecules in vibration and rotation rate of the resonant frequency are both in the terahertz band, so the terahertz in food, the choice of fine strains of agriculture and food processing industry has a good application prospect. The application of terahertz is still in the continuous development of research.
MEMS display
At present, QUALCOMM photoelectric and Pixtronix are developing MEMS display technology, MEMS display compared with previous type displays, the advantage is it has low power consumption. Power consumption is about a quarter of the LCD monitor. Hitachi is already using the technology.
Iron-phosphate-based lithium-ion batteries
It uses lithium iron phosphate as positive materials of lithium-ion battery. The lithium ion battery of the battery anode materials have many choices, basically are cobalt acid lithium, manganese acid lithium, nickel acid lithium, Ternary Material, and lithium iron phosphate. Among them the acid lithium cobalt is the most used positive material in lithium ion battery, and other positive materials due to many reasons, at present in the market there is not yet a lot of production. Lithium iron phosphate is also one of the lithium ion batteries. From the principle of material speaking, lithium iron phosphate is also a kind of embedded/take off process, this principle is the same with the cobalt acid lithium manganese, acid lithium completely.
450 mm wafer factory
About 450 mm silicon chips transition has been arguing in the industry. There are three companies taking a positive attitude, respectively is Intel, TSMC and Samsung, 18 inches wafer production will be more efficient than 12 inches factory from environmental protection, economic point of view.
As for the 450 mm wafer transition time points, TSMC selected in 2015 ~ 2016, namely 22 nm ~ 16 nm volume production stage, while industry may have different views. because when transfer 200 mm to 300 mm silicon chips, originally thought is 250 nm node, in fact, it put off to 130 nm node.