72 The PCB Magazine • February 2016
New Stanford Battery Shuts Down at High
Temperatures and Restarts When Cool
Stanford researchers have invented a lithium-ion
battery that turns on and off depending on the
temperature. The new technology could prevent
battery fires that have plagued laptops, hover
boards, and other electronic devices.
Largest Flexible X-ray Detector Made with
Thin Film Transistors
The Flexible Electronics and Display Center (FEDC)
at Arizona State University and PARC, a Xerox
company, announced today that they have suc-
cessfully manufactured the world's largest flexible
X-ray detector prototypes using advanced thin
film transistors (TFTs).
Automotive Display Systems to Grow
to $18.6B by 2021
Driven by continued innovation in vehicle connec-
tivity and safety technologies, global revenue from
automotive display systems will grow at a com-
pound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than
11% to $18.6 billion by the end of 2021.
A Different Way to Make a Cathode
May Mean Better Batteries
lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide, or nMC,
is one of the most promising chemistries for bet-
ter lithium batteries, especially for electric vehicle
applications, but scientists have been struggling to
get higher capacity out of them.
Intel's 3D XPoint to Shake High-End
SSD Market in 3Q16
Aiming to enhance the efficiency of oEM system
products and widen the lead over trailing compet-
itors in the SSD market, Intel plans to ship its next-
generation SSD memory products in the third
quarter of 2016.
Breakthrough Achieved in Ceramics
3D Printing Technology
Researchers at HRl laboratories llC have achieved
a new milestone in 3D printing technology by
demonstrating an approach to additively manu-
facture ceramics that overcomes the limits of tra-
ditional ceramic processing and enables high-tem-
perature, high-strength ceramic components.
Engineers Demo First Processor that Uses
Light for Ultrafast Communications
Engineers have successfully married electrons and
photons within a single-chip microprocessor, a
landmark development that opens the door to ul-
trafast, low-power data crunching.
Satellites Find Sustainable Energy in Cities
Underground heat islands in cities have an enor-
mous geothermal potential. Warm groundwater can
be used to produce sustainable energy for heating
and cooling. Researchers
of Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology (KIT) have now developed a new meth
-
od to find underground heat islands: They estimate
groundwater temperature from surface
tempera-
tures and building densities measured by satellites.
New Acoustic Technique Reveals Structural
Information in Nanoscale Materials
Understanding where and how phase transitions
occur is critical to developing new generations of
the materials used in high-performance batteries,
sensors, energy-harvesting devices, medical diag
-
nostic equipment and other applications. But until
now there was no good way to study and simul-
taneously map these phenomena at the relevant
length scales.
Graphene Proves a Perfect Fit for
Wearable Devices
Cheap, flexible, wireless graphene communica-
tion devices such as mobile phones and health-
care monitors can be directly printed into clothing
and even skin, University of Manchester academics
have demonstrated.
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