Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/857644
78 The PCB Magazine • August 2017 As business leaders, we should continue to watch the burgeoning manufacturing economy of India as they work hard to achieve success in the global community. IPC will continue to work hard to support the manufacturing econ- omy in India as the country grows to further become a participant in the international elec- tronics industry. PCB References 1. India's population explosion will make or break its economy, Majumdar and Riley, CNN Money, April 2016. 2. Automobile Industry in India, IBEF, June 2017. John Mitchell is president and CEO of IPC—Association Connecting Electronics Industries. To read past columns or to contact Mitchell, click here. to create an automated plant. While this still means jobs for India, those jobs may be out of the technical range of those currently trained to traditional manufacturing practices. This is of serious concern to India, as by 2020, the country will boast more than 900 million people of working age [1] . It is estimated that two years later, India will pass China to be- come the most populous country in the world. To add to these concerns, the Labor Ministries' data estimates around one million people will enter India's workforce every month. Along with this growth, India continues to excel in the automotive sector. The Indian au- tomotive industry is one of the largest in the world with an annual production of 23.96 mil- lion vehicles in 2015–16, following a growth of 2.57% over the last year. The automobile indus- try in India also accounts for 7.1% of the coun- try's gross domestic product (GDP) [2] . The gov- ernment also has a plan for the faster adoption and manufacturing of electric and hybrid ve- hicles, known as the National Electric Mobility Mission 2020. The goal of this is to encourage progressive introduction of reliable and afford- able electric vehicles into the country. INDIA MAKES MANUFACTURING GAINS TO PARTICIPATE IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY Transistors, as used in billions on every com- puter chip, are nowadays based on semiconduc- tor-type materials, usually silicon. As the demands for computer chips in laptops, tablets and smart- phones continue to rise, new possibilities are be- ing sought out to fabricate them inexpensively, en- ergy-saving and flexibly. A group led by CUI sci- entist Dr. Christian Klinke (Universität Hamburg) has now succeeded in produc- ing transistors based on a new principle. The research results have been published in the scientific journal Sci- ence Advances. The transistors devel- oped by Klinke's group use metal nanoparticles so small they no longer show their metallic character under current flow, but exhibit an energy gap caused by the Coulomb repulsion of the electrons among one another. Via a control - ling voltage, this gap can be shifted energetically and the current can thus be switched on and off as desired. In contrast to previous similar approach- es, the nanoparticles are not deposited as individ- ual structures, rendering the production very complex and the properties of the cor- responding components un- reliable, but, instead, they are deposited as thin films with a height of only one lay- er of nanoparticles. Employ- ing this method, the electri- cal characteristics of the de- vices become adjustable and almost identical. Researchers Develop New Transistor Concept