Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1520956
54 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2024 With so much growth and development happening in India, what is the most exciting thing about our industry right now? I think the connection and engagement between IPC and industry members in the mission to build electronics better is exciting. We see so much volunteering in the work to develop standards. ough we started in 2010, we have 70 companies currently developing standards in India. We just created the group last year, and it's growing. We have a standards committee for design, EMS, and wire harness, and last year, IPC India unveiled a milestone achievement of significant magnitude—the release of IPC-1771, EMS Automotive Sup- plier Check Sheet. is pivotal standard, a collaborative effort involving global automo- tive giants and suppliers, marks a historic day in the industry. We developed the first Indian global standard for the automotive sector. I see the volunteering and industry engagement with IPC as very exciting right now. Gaurab, it's been lovely to speak with you. Thank you so much for taking the time. ank you, Marcy. PCB007 That seems like an aggressive target. e current government is very proactive in pushing this target. We see enormous growth in India and a hunger for education in the Indian electronics market. IPC India sees this goal as consistent with the roadmap because our certification numbers and demand for edu- cation have increased significantly, particularly in the last five years. What are you doing in your workforce programs? We undertook some new initiatives in work- force development. We went to colleges and trained students, who were then hired by industry. is type of workforce development serves a great need in India. Tell me about some of the events you have planned this year. IPC is planning some global events in India, par- ticularly IEMI. It's not an event; it's a journey. In the past three years, we have realized that the industry is looking for a platform like IPC to bring all the relevant stakeholders together. e upcoming IEMI event in July will have del- egates from various countries and Indian exhib- itors. It will be a global event for IPC. In an open-access study published recently in Nature Communications, Rice physicist Ming Yi and more than three dozen co-authors from a dozen insti- tutions similarly showed they could use heat to toggle a crystal of iron, germanium and tellurium between two electronic phases. In each of these, the restricted movement of electrons produces topologically pro- tected quantum states. Ultimately, storing qubits in topologically protected states could potentially reduce decoherence-related errors that have plagued quantum computing. Unlike the materials used in most phase-chang- ing memory technology, Yi and colleagues found the iron-germanium-tellurium alloy did not need to be melted and recrystallized to change phases. Rather, they found that empty atomic sites in the crystal's lat- tice, known as vacancies, were arranged in differently ordered patterns depending on how quickly the crys- tal cooled. To switch from one patterned phase to the other, they showed they could simply reheat the crys- tal and cool it for either the longer or shorter period of time. "If you want to change the vacancy order in a mate- rial, that typically happens at much lower tempera- tures than you'd need to melt everything," Yi said. She said few studies have explored how the topological properties of quantum materials change in response to changes in vacancy order. (Source: Rice University.) Discovery Points Path to Flash-Like Memory for Storing Qubits