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90 The PCB Magazine • November 2016 • Ensure your graphic is two feet off the floor and not competing with potted plants and your nicely polished shoes. The vast ma- jority of your graphic should be eye level, whereas visitors will read your graphics as they do a billboard or magazine which is left to right (excluding parts of Asia) and from top to bottom. Interactive Modules and Videos Both can be extremely beneficial, although many times the placement of these tools are not aligned with the key reason you decided to ex- hibit in the first place. Spending big bucks on a show to introduce your latest new product or service has the potential of being obscured be- cause some blue suit wanted to show the fancy new corporate video or fell in love with a new app that is at best secondary to the actual prod- uct or service being introduced. Of course, you want to include such interactive tools, just be careful of making them the focal point of your booth. Graphic grief is a common, yet curable dis- ease by prescribing to the above recommenda- tions. As always, watch your dosage and repeat for each show. PCB Barry Lee Cohen is president and managing director of Launch Com- munications. To read past columns or to contact Cohen, click here. MY GRAPHIC GRIEF: TRADE SHOWS AND EVENTS A new design for transis- tors which operate on 'scav- enged' energy from their environment could form the basis for devices which function for months or years without a battery, and could be used for wearable or im- plantable electronics. A newly-developed form of transistor opens a range of new electronic ap- plications including wearable or implantable de- vices by drastically reducing the amount of power used. Devices based on this type of ultralow power transistor, developed by engineers at the Univer- sity of Cambridge, could function for months or even years without a battery by 'scavenging' en- ergy from their environment. Using a similar principle to a computer in sleep mode, the new transistor harnesses a tiny 'leak- age' of electrical current, known as a near-off-state current, for its operations. This leak, like water dripping from a faulty tap, is a characteristic of all transistors, but this is the first time that it has been effectively captured and used functionally. The re- sults, reported in the journal Science, open new avenues for system design for the In- ternet of Things. The transistors can be produced at low tempera- tures and printed on almost any material, from glass to polyester. They are based on a unique geometry which uses a 'non-desirable' characteristic, namely the point of contact between the metal and semicon- ducting components of a transistor, a so-called 'Schottky barrier.' The new design gets around one of the main is- sues preventing the development of ultralow pow- er transistors, namely the ability to produce them at very small sizes. As transistors get smaller, their two electrodes start to influence the behaviour of one another, and the voltages spread, meaning that below a certain size, transistors fail to function as desired. By changing the design of the transis- tors, the Cambridge researchers used the Schottky barriers to keep the electrodes independent from one another. Engineers Design Ultralow Power Transistors that May Function for Years