Tech Talk

January 2022

Cellulose Material Converts Heat to Electricity

Ally Winning

It’s always funny how one material or composite that you never associate with electronics pops up as part of research for one purpose and then comes up again soon after for a totally different area. In this column in November, I wrote about how researchers from Brown University and the University of Maryland had used cellulose nanofibrils, which are derived from wood, combined with copper,

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Date:

01/25/2022

Adaptable Transistors Can Perform Different Logic Tasks

Ally Winning

At its most basic form a transistor in an IC is just a simple switch. As transistors have been miniaturised, these switches have both become faster and used less power to go from one state to another. The regularity of the steps in this shrinking process has been so consistent that it even has its own “law”

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Date:

01/18/2022

A Distributors Take on the Industry in 2022 with Mouser

Ally Winning

A Distributors Take on the Industry in 2022 with Mouser 2021 was a tough year for the manufacturers of goods that use electronic components. Despite booming demand for their products, those manufacturers struggled to get enough product on shelves to satisfy demand, mainly due to a shortage of semicondu

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Date:

01/11/2022

Artist’s rendering of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Arachne flight experiment on orbit.

Proof-of-Concept for Space-based Solar Collector

Ally Winning

The concept of collecting the sun’s energy above earth’s atmosphere and sending it back to earth to be used has been understood for well over half a century. If it could be made to work effectively, the technique offers many advantages over earth based solar collection, especially for geographical areas th

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Date:

01/04/2022