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PCBD-Oct2016

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16 The PCB Design Magazine • October 2016 expect them, so we're going to continue seeing a shift to these types of models. While coming up with the idea for the com- pany, I was reading the book "Free" by Chris Anderson, which is a look at how free services are monetized, and why they make sense for software where the incremental cost of serving an additional customer approaches zero. I'd encourage any business owner in our industry to read this book. I don't think this model works for everything, but I do think it's important to be aware of the dynamics behind them, and consider how to incorporate these philosophies. Shaughnessy: Is there anything else you'd like to add? Baker: We're starting to see a lot of activity and innovation in the EDA and PCB industries, which is definitely something we can all lever- age to bring the brightest minds into to our in- dustry. For example, we're seeing M-CAD compa- nies acquiring E-CAD products because they see huge opportunities with the Internet of Things. We're seeing a growing expansion in terms of the accessibility of making circuit boards and chips, and also a broadening of the indus- try to include not just PCB designers, but also software developers who want to rapidly get an electronic idea to market. It's a great time to be in the PCB industry, and we should all be leveraging this to help grow our industry by recruiting the best and brightest talent. Shaughnessy: Thanks for your time, Natasha. I know we'll be seeing you again. Baker: Thank you. PCBDESIGN A research team led by fac- ulty scientist Ali Javey at the De- partment of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has created a transistor with a working 1-nanometer gate. "We made the smallest tran- sistor reported to date," said Ja- vey, lead principal investigator of the Electronic Materials program in Berkeley Lab's Materials Science Division. "We demonstrated a 1-nanometer-gate transistor, showing that with the choice of proper materials, there is a lot more room to shrink our electronics." The key was to use carbon nanotubes and molyb - denum disulfide (MoS 2 ), an engine lubricant com- monly sold in auto parts shops. The findings were published today in the journal Science. The develop- ment could be key to keeping alive Intel co-founder Gordon Moore's prediction that the density of tran- sistors on integrated circuits would double every two years. Both silicon and MoS 2 have a crystalline lattice structure, but electrons flowing through silicon are lighter and encounter less resistance compared with MoS 2 . That is a boon when the gate is 5 nanometers or longer. But below that length, a quan- tum mechanical phenomenon called tunneling kicks in, and the gate barrier is no longer able to keep the electrons from barging through from the source to the drain termi- nals. Once they settled on MoS 2 as the semiconductor material, it was time to construct the gate. Making a 1-nanometer structure, it turns out, is no small feat. Conventional lithography techniques don't work well at that scale, so the researchers turned to carbon nanotubes, hollow cylindrical tubes with diameters as small as 1 nanometer. They then measured the electrical properties of the devices to show that the MoS 2 transistor with the carbon-nanotube gate effectively controlled the flow of electrons. "This work demonstrated the shortest transistor ever," said Javey. Smallest. Transistor. Ever. INSPIRING MILLENNIALS IN THE PCB DESIGN COMMUNITY

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