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November 2016 • SMT Magazine 95 Liu: Yes. So they have to use the smart factory to accommodate this. Las Marias: Does your company only focus on Chi- na? Liu: Right now, we only focus on China because we know the situation and we can communi- cate with them very smoothly. Maybe in the future we can expand, but China is a very big market. Las Marias: Earlier on you mentioned that you're planning to develop an open interface so that these different brand name machines will be able to communicate with each other. Can you explain how that works? Liu: The SMT line can work automatically be- cause the interface is based off the SMEMA in- terface. It communicates to the screen printer and the pick-and-placer says, "I'm ready and please give me next the board." This commu- nication is very easy, but the future smart fac- tory needs to go to the pick-and-place direct- ly without user intervention. The chip mounter and pick-and-place also report their situation so that you can collect the data and analyze if the machine is running well, or maybe yield is a bit down and needs to be fixed at once. Las Marias: James, do you have any final words to say on the future of the smart factory? Liu: Maybe our interface is not the best inter- face, but I want to be a pioneer and launch this test before anyone else can do it. This is the key issue within the electronics industry—transi- tioning to the smart factory. And I want to over- come this problem. Maybe our interface is not as good, but maybe someone can develop bet- ter. That's good! I will continue to push this test forward, and it's my honor to do this. Las Marias: James, thank you very much. I look forward to talking more with you about the prog- ress of your endeavor. Liu: Thank you. SMT ACHIEVING THE SMART FACTORY VISION Researchers at the U.S. De- partment of Energy's Ames Laboratory and partner insti- tutions conducted a systemat- ic investigation into the prop- erties of the newest family of unconventional superconduct- ing materials, iron-based com- pounds. The study may help the scientific community dis- cover new superconducting materials with unique properties. Researchers combined innovative crystal growth, highly sensitive magnetic measure- ments, and the controlled introduction of disor- der through electron bombardment to create and study an entire range of compositions within a class of iron-based superconductors. They found that the key fundamental properties—tran- sition temperature and magnetic field penetration depth — of these complex su- perconductors were depen- dent on composition and the degree of disorder in the ma- terial structure. "This was a systematic ap- proach to more fully under- stand the behavior of uncon- ventional superconductors," said Ruslan Prozorov, Ames Laboratory faculty scientist and professor in the De- partment of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University. "We found that some proposed mod- els of unconventional superconductivity in these iron-based compounds were compatible with our results, and this study further limited the possible theoretical mechanisms of superconductivity." That information will also serve as a resource for future research into unconventional supercon- ductors. Scientists Gain Insight on Mechanism of Unconventional Superconductivity