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May 2015 • The PCB Design Magazine 63 foundation of design decision-making, compo- nent placement, track routing and assembly is- sues, all of which need to be met to create high quality and effective end products. More and more companies expect electronic engineers to be trained to this level and the qualification ensures a level of efficiency and effectiveness is maintained during design work. Qualifications such as this one and the ini- tiatives in schools are a great step in the right direction to providing an environment for the electronics industry to thrive. But employers, employees and the industry need to embrace the changes and challenges or face being left behind. Investment in the future electronics professionals is a key talking point within the industry and even though the subject is much debated and highlighted as crucial to delivering high quality design work, it is still one of the in- dustries least likely to invest in the recruitment, retention and development of staff. PCBDESIGN References 1. IPC 2015 report 2. Newelectronics.co.uk 3. Tech UK 4. USA Today article ELECTRONIC DESIGN TRAINING CRuCIAL TO INDuSTRy GROWTH continues Bob sadowski is an applications consultant with Quadra solutions ltd, the zuken reseller for CaD- sTar in the uK, Ireland, Benelux, sweden and norway. researchers experimentally demonstrated that patterning of magnetic materials into ar- rays of nanoscale dots can lead to a very strong and highly controllable modification of the po- larization of light when the beam reflects from the array. This discovery could increase the sen- sitivity of optical components for telecommuni- cation and biosensing applications. The coupling between light and magnetiza- tion in ferromagnetic materials arises from quan- tum mechanical interactions. These interactions result in magneto-optical effects that modify the properties, such as the polarization axis or intensity of the light. Interactions between light and matter are enhanced at the nanoscale. This is a key motivation in the field of plasmonics, which studies light interacting with metal nanostructures. a nano-sized, metallic nanoparticle behaves very much like an antenna for vis- ible wavelengths; such anten- nas are familiar to us in nu- merous everyday devices that operate on much longer radio- and micro-waves. The researchers took advantage of a phenomenon known as sur- face lattice resonances in which all the nanopar- ticles radiate in unison in an array. The key to this is to assemble the magnetic nanoantennas on a length scale that matches the wavelength of the incoming light. In periodic arrays, nanoparticles interact strongly with each other, giving rise to collec- tive oscillations. such behavior has been report- ed in noble metal nanoparticles and researched extensively at aalto university in the Quantum Dynamics research group. now, a collaborative effort between QD and the nanomagnetism and spintronics (nanospin) group shows that such collective oscillations can also be observed in magnetic materials. The surface lattice resonances en- hance the light polarization change in ferro- magnetic materials, the so- called magneto-optical Kerr effect. The joint team used the nanofabrication facilities in the Micronova cleanroom as well as the electron microsco- py tools available in the na- nomicroscopy Center. Putting a New Spin on Plasmonics