Screens are becoming smaller and sharper. This can be seen, for example, in augmented reality glasses and the electronic viewfinders of cameras, some of which have a screen diagonal of less than 1 centimeter (0.4 inches).

A new approach could help make future AI chips smaller and more energy-efficient. A KAIST-led research team has used a single material to address one of the major obstacles facing atomically thin semiconductors: the difficulty of efficiently injecting charge. The technology could contribute to next-generation AI and low-power semiconductor devices in which multiple ultrathin layers are vertically integrated to increase device density and performance.

A working prototype that can see, remember and interact with the world like the human brain could one day underpin smart bionic eyes while using far less energy than today's technologies. The invention from RMIT University combines sensing, memory and information processing within the same system, reducing the need to constantly move data between separate sensors, memory banks and processors.

As transistors inside microchips continue to shrink, the metal wiring that connects them is becoming a growing obstacle to faster, more energy-efficient chips. Narrower wires have greater electrical resistance, while smaller gaps between them increase interference between adjacent signals. These effects impede data transfer and raise energy consumption—an issue known as an interconnect bottleneck, which is especially acute in data-hungry artificial intelligence processors.

The ability to change focus instantly is something most people take for granted. Every day, our eyes effortlessly switch between reading a book, recognizing a face across the room or watching a bird fly overhead. Replicating that remarkable technological flexibility, however, has proved far more difficult.

Recently, the field of magnetics has seen the proposal of a new class of magnetism called altermagnetism, which could allow advances in miniaturizing and improving RAM architecture in computers. Rice University's Ming Yi, together with collaborators Bharat Jalan of the University of Minnesota and Milan Radovic of the Paul Scherrer Institute, recently published a paper in Science Advances showing that the quantum material ruthenium dioxide potentially displays this new altermagnetism in its ultrathin-film form, in which the material is prepared as a thin slice only a few atomic layers thick.

Researchers have found a way to speed up components that control light polarization in optical communication and computing. Polarization is a property of light that can carry additional information along with the primary signal, enabling higher data throughput. State-of-the-art components that control polarization in optical circuits have to be physically rotated many times a second, wasting precious time. Instead, this can be achieved by varying the temperature of the material the light passes through.

Major Taiwan computer chipmaker TSMC said Thursday it plans to spend another $100 billion on expanding its manufacturing capacity in the United States.

India approved a new semiconductor program Wednesday, offering more than $13 billion in financial assistance to accelerate local chip production as it seeks to become a global electronics powerhouse.

The human brain actively keeps "learning" in balance by holding on to what matters and letting go of what does not. Researchers in Korea have now reproduced this ability in a semiconductor device, using the color of light to strengthen (remember) or weaken (forget) an artificial synapse's memory. Remarkably, the key ingredient is a material "defect" that engineers usually try to eliminate. The study appears in Nature Communications.

A tandem neural network capable of inferring key physical parameters of semiconductor materials from simple transistor measurements has been developed, as reported by researchers from the Institute of Science, Tokyo. While conventional approaches for this type of analysis require hours or even days, the proposed system produces results in under 1 millisecond with near-perfect accuracy.

The global semiconductor market is approaching US$1 trillion in annual sales, driven by growing demand for faster computers, smarter AI systems and more powerful electronic devices. Singapore, which produces one in 10 of the world's chips, has a direct stake in sustaining that trajectory.

AI data centers are power-hungry. Not only do artificial intelligence computations consume enormous amounts of electricity, but a significant amount of energy is also required to cool the semiconductor chips that heat up during operation. As AI chips continue to deliver higher performance, the amount of heat they generate increases rapidly. As a result, conventional air cooling and external copper heat spreaders are approaching their practical limits. To address this challenge, a KAIST research team has developed an ultra-high-efficiency liquid-cooling technology that cools semiconductor chips from within.

A tiny new chip could give cameras and sensing systems a far sharper view of the world, helping them detect subtle differences in materials and environments that standard color imaging systems cannot see.

The world's power grid is straining under the surge in electricity demand from data centers, electric vehicles and renewable energy. And a century-old technology, the power transformer, must support this dramatic increase. A particularly weak link in this is the potential for insulation breakdown, the most frequent indicator of power transformer failures.

Seoul National University College of Engineering announced that a research team led by Prof. Yongtaek Hong from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has developed a high-performance transparent organic light-emitting diode (OLED) incorporating highly conductive transparent metal mesh top electrodes fabricated using a selective metal deposition technique. The research was published in the journal Materials Horizons and was selected as the outside front cover image for the issue.

A joint research team has experimentally observed ballistic transport in single-crystalline copper thin films, demonstrating that ballistic transport is achievable in an industry-standard metal at interconnect-relevant dimensions. The study, titled "Ballistic transport in nanodevices based on single-crystalline Cu thin films," was published in Nature Communications.

If you shop on Google Flights, you get a quick comparison of different itineraries: One flight's carbon emissions may be average, while another's are 14% higher. But if you go shopping for a new laptop, you likely won't find quick, comprehensible information on different models' sustainability bona fides, despite the notable environmental impacts of producing and discarding electronics. In part, that's because understanding a device's emissions is difficult and time-consuming, even for experts.

Transistors, small devices that can amplify or switch electrical signals, are central components of all modern computer chips and digital devices. There are two main types of transistors, known as n-type and p-type transistors.