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66 SMT Magazine • March 2016 ited in-house resources. In a world where OEMs have been sold on the value of outsourcing manufacturing and reduced internal problem solving resources, an EMS business model that leverages the synergies of strong design engi- neering, supply chain management and manu- facturing expertise helps fill the gaps that occur as OEM internal resources are reduced. SmT Jered Stoehr is Milwaukee Electron- ics' vice president of sales and mar- keting. To reach Stoehr, click here. thE aPPEal of a CoMbInEd EngInEErIng and ManufaCturIng SolutIon cost of functional testing the test engineering team has developed proprietary software code that speeds up functions test from minutes to seconds. While it is optimal to add it in the design phase, it can be added to build-to-print product. The end goal of the final mix of test and inspection strategies is always to provide the best coverage at the lowest cost. In the example above, the contractor is see- ing a steady stream of engineering projects that convert to manufacturing projects. The trust built in the product development phase often translates to competitive advantage in the man- ufacturing phase. The ability to flexibly support build-to-print customers' needs for redesign to deal with obsolescence or a need for increased functionality is valued by customers with lim- A group of Cornell researchers is hoping its work with quantum dot solids can help usher in a new era in electronics. led by Tobias hanrath, associ- ate professor in the robert Freder- ick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and graduate student Kevin Whitham, the multidisciplinary team has cre- ated two-dimensional superstruc- tures out of single-crystal building blocks. Through directed assembly and attachment processes, the lead selenide quantum dots are synthesized into larger crystals, then fused together to form atomically coherent square superlattices. The difference between these and previous crystalline structures is the atomic coherence of each 5-nanometer crystal. Each crystal is connect- ed directly to each other. The electrical properties of these superstructures potentially are superior to existing semiconductor quantum dots, with an- ticipated applications in solar cells and other elec- tronic devices. The paper, "Charge transport and localization in atomically coherent quantum dot solids," is published in Nature Materials. Whitham did most of the experi- mentation and is lead author of the work. Also contributing were Jun Yang, postdoctoral researcher; Ben- jamin h. Savitzky, graduate student in the field of physics; lena Kourk- outis, assistant professor and Mor- gan Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow in applied and engineering physics; and Frank Wise, the Samuel B. Eck- ert Professor of Engineering. Professor hanrath explains his group's work on assembling quan- tum dots into ordered, two-dimen- sional superlattices has potential applications in optoelectronics. This latest work has grown out of previous pub- lished research by the Hanrath group, including a paper published in Nano letters that reported a new approach to connecting quantum dots through controlled displacement of a connector molecule. That paper referred to "connecting the dots" as being one of the most persistent hurdles to be overcome. That barrier seems to have been cleared with this new research, which could be the first step toward discovering and developing other novel materials with programmable electronic structure. Quantum Dot Solids: This Generation's Silicon Wafer?