Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1050827
20 PCB007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2018 process that reflect progressive increases in the sophistication of tooling, materials or process- ing, and fabrication cost. These levels are: • Level A: General design producibility (preferred) • Level B: Moderate design producibility (standard) • Level C: Least design producibility (reduced) The new proposed level that was suggested due to the complexity in the PCBs for medical device applications is: • Level D: Advanced design producibility (exceedingly reduced) The producibility levels should not be inter- preted as a design requirement, but rather as a method of communicating the degree of dif- ficulty. Task Group Today, PCBs are made to customer require- ments rather than following IPC standards and we do not want to continue on this page. There are active 44 members in the task group rep- resenting the PCB, electronics manufacturing, and medical industries. The task group is still open to new members. Above all, we need more product owners and people from elec- tronics production for medical device applica- tions to join. Conclusion With digitalization, AI, and IoT, the trace- ability and transparency to how a PCB is pro- duced will be even more important. We must rule out the PCBs that follow the standards to the ones that do not. The day will come when you or someone you know might need a medi- cal device, and you want to make sure it does its job correctly. PCB007 Jan Pedersen is a senior technical advisor at Elmatica. To read past columns or contact Pedersen, click here. The material used, bismuth with a little antimony, con- tinues to surprise. Over the years, it has turned into a model material for electronic properties. While the num- ber of electrons available for conduction in bismuth is so low that it can hardly be called a metal, these electrons move like particles at the speed of light. For future electronics and quantum computing, 2D ma- terials like graphene appear to be strong candidates. The newly discovered property shows that this doesn't have to be a limiting factor. 3D building blocks might be possi- ble as well, just like in current-day silicon-based electron- ic devices. The research was done by the Quantum Transport in Matter (QTM) group, part of University of Twente's MESA+ Institute. The UT scientists closely collaborated with colleagues of the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute of the University of Amsterdam. (Source: University of Twente) Scientists at the University of Twente (UT) and the Uni- versity of Amsterdam have demonstrated a new property of topological materials: the lossless current conduction of bismuth. In their paper published in the journal Nature Materials, researchers demonstrated that the transport and spin of electrons are related in a topological material. Thanks to this property, a non-superconducting material can con- duct current without resistance. By applying supercon- ducting electrodes made of niobium to a thin crystal flake of bismuth doped with antimony, a superconducting cur- rent flows through the material at a temperature of 10 mil- li-Kelvin. In a superconductor, paired electrons or Cooper pairs are responsible for conduction. Majorana quasiparticles also play a major role in this. Further, this property can be observed at the surface and inside the material in the "bulk." This makes the proper- ties less vulnerable to noise or pollution. Superconductivity Where You Don't Expect It