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Intro to reed switches, magnets, magnetic fields

This brief introductory video on the DigiKey site offers tips for engineers designing with reed switches. Dr. Stephen Day, Ph.D. from Coto Technology gives a solid overview on reed switches -- complete with real-world application examples -- and a detailed explanation of how they react to magnetic fields.
View the video.

Bi-color LEDs to light up your designs

Created with engineers and OEMs in mind, SpectraBright Series SMD RGB and Bi-Color LEDs from Visual Communi-cations Company (VCC) deliver efficiency, design flexibility, and control for devices in a range of industries, including mil-aero, automated guided vehicles, EV charging stations, industrial, telecom, IoT/smart home, and medical. These 50,000-hr bi-color and RGB options save money and space on the HMI, communicating two or three operating modes in a single component.
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All about slip rings: How they work and their uses

Rotary Systems has put together a really nice basic primer on slip rings -- electrical collectors that carry a current from a stationary wire into a rotating device. Common uses are for power, proximity switches, strain gauges, video, and Ethernet signal transmission. This introduction also covers how to specify, assembly types, and interface requirements. Rotary Systems also manufactures rotary unions for fluid applications.
Read the overview.

Seifert thermoelectric coolers from AutomationDirect

Automation-Direct has added new high-quality and efficient stainless steel Seifert 340 BTU/H thermoelectric coolers with 120-V and 230-V power options. Thermoelectric coolers from Seifert use the Peltier Effect to create a temperature difference between the internal and ambient heat sinks, making internal air cooler while dissipating heat into the external environment. Fans assist the convective heat transfer from the heat sinks, which are optimized for maximum flow.
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EMI shielding honeycomb air vent panel design

Learn from the engineering experts at Parker how honeycomb air vent panels are used to help cool electronics with airflow while maintaining electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding. Topics include: design features, cell size and thickness, platings and coatings, and a stacked design called OMNI CELL construction. These vents can be incorporated into enclosures where EMI radiation and susceptibility is a concern or where heat dissipation is necessary. Lots of good info.
Read the Parker blog.

What is 3D-MID? Molded parts with integrated electronics from HARTING

3D-MID (three-dimensional mechatronic integrated devices) technology combines electronic and mechanical functionalities into a single, 3D component. It replaces the traditional printed circuit board and opens up many new opportunities. It takes injection-molded parts and uses laser-direct structuring to etch areas of conductor structures, which are filled with a copper plating process to create very precise electronic circuits. HARTING, the technology's developer, says it's "Like a PCB, but 3D." Tons of possibilities.
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Loss-free conversion of 3D/CAD data

CT CoreTech-nologie has further developed its state-of-the-art CAD converter 3D_Evolution and is now introducing native interfaces for reading Solidedge and writing Nx and Solidworks files. It supports a wide range of formats such as Catia, Nx, Creo, Solidworks, Solidedge, Inventor, Step, and Jt, facilitating smooth interoperability between different systems and collaboration for engineers and designers in development environments with different CAD systems.
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Top 5 reasons for solder joint failure

Solder joint reliability is often a pain point in the design of an electronic system. According to Tyler Ferris at ANSYS, a wide variety of factors affect joint reliability, and any one of them can drastically reduce joint lifetime. Properly identifying and mitigating potential causes during the design and manufacturing process can prevent costly and difficult-to-solve problems later in a product lifecycle.
Read this informative ANSYS blog.

Advanced overtemp detection for EV battery packs

Littelfuse has introduced TTape, a ground-breaking over-temperature detection platform designed to transform the management of Li-ion battery systems. TTape helps vehicle systems monitor and manage premature cell aging effectively while reducing the risks associated with thermal runaway incidents. This solution is ideally suited for a wide range of applications, including automotive EV/HEVs, commercial vehicles, and energy storage systems.
Learn more.

Benchtop ionizer for hands-free static elimination

EXAIR's Varistat Benchtop Ionizer is the latest solution for neutralizing static on charged surfaces in industrial settings. Using ionizing technology, the Varistat provides a hands-free solution that requires no compressed air. Easily mounted on benchtops or machines, it is manually adjustable and perfect for processes needing comprehensive coverage such as part assembly, web cleaning, printing, and more.
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LED light bars from AutomationDirect

Automation-Direct adds CCEA TRACK-ALPHA-PRO series LED light bars to expand their offering of industrial LED fixtures. Their rugged industrial-grade anodized aluminum construction makes TRACKALPHA-PRO ideal for use with medium to large-size industrial machine tools and for use in wet environments. These 120 VAC-rated, high-power LED lights provide intense, uniform lighting, with up to a 4,600-lumen output (100 lumens per watt). They come with a standard bracket mount that allows for angle adjustments. Optional TACLIP mounts (sold separately) provide for extra sturdy, vibration-resistant installations.
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World's first metalens fisheye camera

2Pi Optics has begun commercial-ization of the first fisheye camera based on the company's proprietary metalens technology -- a breakthrough for electronics design engineers and product managers striving to miniaturize the tiny digital cameras used in advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), AR/VR, UAVs, robotics, and other industrial applications. This camera can operate at different wavelengths -- from visible, to near IR, to longer IR -- and is claimed to "outperform conventional refractive, wide-FOV optics in all areas: size, weight, performance, and cost."
Learn more.

Orbex offers two fiber optic rotary joint solutions

Orbex Group announces its 700 Series of fiber optic rotary joint (FORJ) assemblies, supporting either single or multi-mode operation ideal for high-speed digital transmission over long distances. Wavelengths available are 1,310 or 1,550 nm. Applications include marine cable reels, wind turbines, robotics, and high-def video transmission. Both options feature an outer diameter of 7 mm for installation in tight spaces. Construction includes a stainless steel housing.
Learn more.

Mini tunnel magneto-resistance effect sensors

Littelfuse has released its highly anticipated 54100 and 54140 mini Tunnel Magneto-Resistance (TMR) effect sensors, offering unmatched sensitivity and power efficiency. The key differentiator is their remarkable sensitivity and 100x improvement in power efficiency compared to Hall Effect sensors. They are well suited for applications in position and limit sensing, RPM measurement, brushless DC motor commutation, and more in various markets including appliances, home and building automation, and the industrial sectors.
Learn more.

Panasonic solar and EV components available from Newark

Newark has added Panasonic Industry's solar inverters and EV charging system components to their power portfolio. These best-in-class products help designers meet the growing global demand for sustainable and renewable energy mobility systems. Offerings include film capacitors, power inductors, anti-surge thick film chip resistors, graphite thermal interface materials, power relays, capacitors, and wireless modules.
Learn more.

Researchers observe electrons zipping around in crystals

Calley Eads, a fifth-year doctoral student in the UA's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, aligns a laser system used to track electrons on time-scales at the limits of what can be measured. In her research, she investigates materials that could one day bring faster computing and more efficient solar cells. [Photo: Kyle Mittan/UANews]

 

 

 

 

By Daniel Stolte, University of Arizona

The end of the silicon age has begun. As computer chips approach the physical limits of miniaturization and power-hungry processors drive up energy costs, scientists are looking to a new crop of exotic materials that could foster a new generation of computing devices that promise to push performance to new heights while skimping on energy consumption.

Unlike current silicon-based electronics, which shed most of the energy they consume as waste heat, the future is all about low-power computing. Known as spintronics, this technology relies on a quantum physical property of electrons -- up or down spin -- to process and store information, rather than moving them around with electricity as conventional computing does.

On the quest to making spintronic devices a reality, scientists at the University of Arizona are studying an exotic crop of materials known as transition metal dichalcogenides, or TMDs. TMDs have exciting properties lending themselves to new ways of processing and storing information and could provide the basis of future transistors and photovoltaics -- and potentially even offer an avenue toward quantum computing.

For example, current silicon-based solar cells convert realistically only about 25 percent of sunlight into electricity, so efficiency is an issue, says Calley Eads, a fifth-year doctoral student in the UA's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry who studies some of the properties of these new materials. "There could be a huge improvement there to harvest energy, and these materials could potentially do this," she says.

Calley Eads inspects a sample in the vacuum chamber to get it ready for measurement. [Photo: Kyle Mittan/UANews]

 

 

There is a catch, however: Most TMDs show their magic only in the form of sheets that are very large, but only one to three atoms thin. Such atomic layers are challenging enough to manufacture on a laboratory scale, let alone in industrial mass production.

Many efforts are underway to design atomically thin materials for quantum communication, low-power electronics, and solar cells, according to Oliver Monti, a professor in the department and Eads' adviser. Studying a TMD consisting of alternating layers of tin and sulfur, his research team recently discovered a possible shortcut, published in the journal Nature Communications.

"We show that for some of these properties, you don't need to go to the atomically thin sheets," he says. "You can go to the much more readily accessible crystalline form that's available off the shelf. Some of the properties are saved and survive."

Understanding electron movement
This, of course, could dramatically simplify device design. "These materials are so unusual that we keep discovering more and more about them, and they are revealing some incredible features that we think we can use, but how do we know for sure?" Monti says. "One way to know is by understanding how electrons move around in these materials so we can develop new ways of manipulating them -- for example, with light instead of electrical current as conventional computers do."

To do this research, the team had to overcome a hurdle that never had been cleared before: figure out a way to "watch" individual electrons as they flow through the crystals.

"We built what is essentially a clock that can time moving electrons like a stopwatch," Monti says. "This allowed us to make the first direct observations of electrons move in crystals in real time. Until now, that had only been done indirectly, using theoretical models."

The work is an important step toward harnessing the unusual features that make TMDs intriguing candidates for future processing technology, because that requires a better understanding of how electrons behave and move around in them.

Monti's "stopwatch" makes it possible to track moving electrons at a resolution of a mere attosecond -- a billionth of a billionth of a second. Tracking electrons inside the crystals, the team made another discovery: The charge flow depends on direction, an observation that seems to fly in the face of physics.

Extreme conditions are used to protect and preserve the TMDs during the experiments. As shown here, all samples are stored and manipulated in a vacuum that is close to the conditions in space. [Photo: Kyle Mittan/UANews]

 

 

 

 

Collaborating with Mahesh Neupane, a computational physicist at Army Research Laboratories, and Dennis Nordlund, an X-ray spectroscopy expert at Stanford University's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Monti's team used a tunable, high-intensity X-ray source to excite individual electrons in their test samples and elevate them to very high energy levels.

"When an electron is excited in that way, it's the equivalent of a car that is being pushed from going 10 miles per hour to thousands of miles per hour," Monti explains. "It wants to get rid of that enormous energy and fall back down to its original energy level. That process is extremely short, and when that happens, it gives off a specific signature that we can pick up with our instruments."

The researchers were able to do this in a way that allowed them to distinguish whether the excited electrons stayed within the same layer of the material, or spread into adjacent layers across the crystal.

"We saw that electrons excited in this way scattered within the same layer and did so extremely fast, on the order of a few hundred attoseconds," Monti says.

In contrast, electrons that did cross into adjacent layers took more than 10 times longer to return to their ground energy state. The difference allowed the researchers to distinguish between the two populations.

"I was very excited to find that directional mechanism of charge distribution occurring within a layer, as opposed to across layers," says Eads, the paper's lead author. "That had never been observed before."

Closer to mass manufacturing
The X-ray "clock" used to track electrons is not part of the envisioned applications but a means to study the behavior of electrons inside them, Monti explains, a necessary first step in getting closer toward technology with the desired properties that could be mass-manufactured.

"One example of the unusual behavior we see in these materials is that an electron going to the right is not the same as an electron going to the left," he says. "That shouldn't happen -- according to physics of standard materials, going to the left or the right is the exact same thing. However, for these materials that is not true."

This directionality is an example of what makes TMDs intriguing to scientists, because it could be used to encode information.

"Moving to the right could be encoded as 'one' and going to the left as 'zero,'" Monti says. "So if I can generate electrons that neatly go to the right, I've written a bunch of ones, and if I can generate electrons that neatly go to the left, I have generated a bunch of zeroes."

Instead of applying electrical current, engineers could manipulate electrons in this way using light such as a laser, to optically write, read, and process information. And perhaps someday it may even become possible to optically entangle information, clearing the way to quantum computing.

"Every year, more and more discoveries are occurring in these materials," Eads says. "They are exploding in terms of what kinds of electronic properties you can observe in them. There is a whole spectrum of ways in which they can function, from superconducting, semiconducting, to insulating, and possibly more."

The research described here is just one way of probing the unexpected, exciting properties of layered TMD crystals, according to Monti.

"If you did this experiment in silicon, you wouldn't see any of this," he says. "Silicon will always behave like a three-dimensional crystal, no matter what you do. It's all about the layering."

Published February 2018

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