Volume 6 Issue 5, May 2023

Co-founder of Intel, creator of Moore’s law and philanthropist.

Despite advances in speech processing systems, such as those used in voice-controlled devices, human hearing still outperforms technical systems in noisy and variable environments. To close this gap, a bioinspired acoustic sensor with integrated signal processing was developed — the dynamic microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based cochlea.

The negative differential capacitance (NDC) of ferroelectrics could be used to reduce the energy consumption of ultra-scaled logic devices. An NDC phenomenon in ultrathin ferroelectric zirconium-doped hafnia is demonstrated. Field-effect transistors incorporating this ferroelectric in the gate stack display enhanced on-currents and reduced off-currents compared with conventional analogues, as well as tunable and enduring NDC.

Soft, conductive fibres that can be used to make electronic textiles can be fabricated at ambient pressure and temperature using a supramolecular-network-structured solution via a spontaneous phase separation technique that mimics spider silk formation.

An elastomer–semiconductor–elastomer stack structure can allow an intrinsically brittle n-type organic semiconductor to be stretched by 50% and used to make fully stretchable complementary electronics.

Incorporation of the alkali metal salt caesium chloride into a hole injection layer can improve the efficiency of charge carrier injection and induce the growth of quasi-two-dimensional perovskite layers with improved emissive properties, resulting in blue perovskite light-emitting diodes with an external quantum efficiency of up to 16.1%.

A microelectromechanical cochlea, which consists of a bio-inspired acoustic sensor with a thermo-mechanical feedback mechanism, exhibits active auditory sensing, allowing the sensor to adapt its properties to different acoustic environments.

A parallel in-memory wireless computing scheme that is based on memristive crossbar arrays can provide energy-efficient wireless data transmission using radio, acoustic and light waves.

Ferroelectric zirconium-doped hafnia (Hf_0.5Zr_0.5O₂) can be used to create negative differential capacitance behaviour in capacitors and transistor gate stacks, providing reliable enhancements in switching performance.