Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/899995
November 2017 • The PCB Design Magazine 67 of our game. What I am saying is that it is easy to lose our way as if we don't keep our priorities straight. Just because you may not have a lot of experience designing boards with signal integri- ty and HDI requirements doesn't mean that you have suddenly become a bad designer. It just means that there are new skills awaiting you that you need to learn and add to your reper- toire that will make you an even better designer. Remember; aviate, navigate, communicate, or perhaps we should rephrase that to say; "de- sign, learn, grow." We all need to grow in our abilities, but we can't do that if we don't focus first on learning new design technologies and skills. But we won't be able to focus on learn- ing those new design skills if we lose sight of who we are: skilled PCB designers. Just as I came close to flying into the side of a hill that day because I was focused on the wrong thing, we too can crash and burn if our priorities aren't straight. To paraphrase John Winger; "All we have to do is to be the great PCB designer that is inside of each of us." So, never forget that you are al- ready a skilled PCB designer and move forward with the confidence that you are the best person for the job. Also, keep your head up so that you don't fly into any hills. PCBDESIGN Tim Haag is a consultant based in Portland, Oregon. DON'T LOSE SIGHT OF WHO YOU REALLY ARE Researchers from the University of Utah's de- partments of electrical and computer engineering and physics and astronomy have discovered that a special kind of perovskite, a combination of an or- ganic and inorganic compound that has the same structure as the original mineral, and can be lay- ered on a silicon wafer to create a vital component for the communications system of the future. That system would use the terahertz spectrum, the next generation of communications bandwidth that uses light instead of electricity to shuttle data. The new research, led by University of Utah electrical and computer engineering professor Ajay Nahata and physics and astronomy Distin- guished Professor Valy Vardeny, was published in Nature Communications. Nahata and Vardeny uncovered an important piece of that puzzle: By depositing a special form of multilayer perovskite onto a silicon wafer, they can modulate terahertz waves passing through it using a simple halogen lamp. Previous at- tempts to do this have usually required the use of an expensive, high-power laser. Vardeny says what's unique about the type of perovskite they are using is that it is both an inorganic material like rock but also organic like a plastic, making it easy to deposit on silicon while also having the optical properties necessary to make this process possible. Nahata says it's probably at least an- other 10 years before terahertz technol- ogy for communications and computing is used in commercial products, but this new research is a significant milestone to getting there. Lightning-Fast Communications