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MARCH 2021 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 63 References 1. 7 Design Aspects of IoT PCB Designs—Siemens EDA (pads.com) Matt Stevenson is the VP of sales and marketing at Sunstone Circuits. To read past columns or contact Stevenson, click here. bends, you can more easily design within the device constraints. 7. Validate your design. Use your relationship with a PCB manufacturer and assembly partner to make sure your design will work. ey will be able to provide feedback that will increase yields and reliability, as well as improve cost competitiveness. e future of IoT is just around the corner. Expand and hone your design skills today, and perhaps be part of creating the next Alexa or Fitbit tomorrow. DESIGN007 Graphene is incredibly strong, lightweight, con- ductive … the list of its superlative properties goes on. It is not, however, magnetic—a shortcoming that has stunted its usefulness in spintronics, an emerg- ing field that scientists say could eventually rewrite the rules of electronics, leading to more powerful semiconductors, computers, and other devices. Now, an international research team led by the University at Buffalo is reporting an advancement that could help overcome this obstacle. In a study published in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers describe how they paired a magnet with graphene, and induced what they describe as "artificial magnetic texture" in the nonmagnetic wonder material. "Independent of each other, graphene and spintronics each possess incredible potential to fundamentally change many aspects of business and society. But if you can blend the two together, the synergistic effects are likely to be something this world hasn't yet seen," says lead author Nargess Arabchigavkani. For their experiments, researchers placed a 20-nanometer-thick magnet in direct contact with a sheet of graphene, which is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice that is less than 1 nanometer thick. "To give you a sense of the size differ- ence, it's a bit like putting a brick on a sheet of paper," says the study's senior author Jonathan Bird, PhD, professor and chair of electrical engineering at the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Researchers then placed eight electrodes in dif- ferent spots around the graphene and magnet to measure their conductivity. The electrodes revealed a surprise—the magnet induced an artificial mag- netic texture in the graphene that persisted even in areas of the graphene away from the magnet. Put simply, the intimate contact between the two objects caused the normally nonmagnetic carbon to behave differently, exhibiting magnetic proper- ties similar to common magnetic materials like iron or cobalt. (Source: University at Buffalo) Putting Graphene in a Spin The image shows eight electrodes around a 20-nanometer-thick magnet (white rectangle) and graphene (white dotted line).