Archive : 31 July 2016 год

A team of European scientists has created a hand-held chemical sensor capable of instantaneous detection from a distance of 30m. Harnessing new photonics technology, the mid-IR sensor uses spectroscopic sensors that read the unique frequencies, or ‘signatures’, given off when liquids or gases interact with light.

Capable of a detection rate of one every few seconds, the device is six times faster than state of the art trace portal scanners.

The MIRPHAB, or ‘Mid-Infrared photonics devices fabrication for chemical sensing and spectroscopic applications’ project, is being coordinated by CEA-Leti, France, and has received funding of €13million from the European Commission's Photonics Public Private Partnership under the Horizon 2020 program, and €2m from the Swiss Government.

Project coordinator Sergio Nicoletti said: “we are making the next generation of sensors that are compact, low cost, low on power consumption and capable of real-time detection where the speed and sensibility is unrivalled.”

The device can also detect diseases, scan for bacteria in fridges and detect the presence of alcohol, and according to Jose Pozo, director of technology and innovation, at the European Photonics Industry Consortium, spectroscopic sensing in the Mid-IR wavelength band (3 to 12µm) could help with climate change and monitor emission controls. Pozo explains that MIRPPHAB will turn these achievements into business and commercial opportunities for both SMEs and large industrial groups.

The device could be installed on the front of airports, scanning crowds for suspicious material, like explosives or illegal drugs, before they even enter the building.

Author
Peggy Lee

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

The EU-Japan ClouT – cloud of things – consortium has decided to add cities and partners to the recent BigClouT programme. The programme gives an analytics capability to the city by leveraging IoT, cloud and big data technologies creating a distributed intelligence that can be implanted in the whole city network. The new cities are Grenoble, Tsukuba and Bristol with Fujisawa remaining as a pilot city.

“Our EU-Japanese collaboration built a platform that provides secure access to real-time and historical data with easy-to-use tools that enable municipalities, citizens, service developers and application integrators to rapidly create, deploy and manage smart city applications,” said Levent Gürgen, the coordinator of the ClouT EU consortium. “And our applications, ranging from environmental monitoring, context aware coupons, citizen safety and elderly care social networks, were validated via field trials in the four ClouT cities: Santander; Genova; Fujisawa and Mitaka.”

ClouT’s European participation was coordinated by Leti, an institute of CEA Tech. It began in 2013 to develop infrastructure, services, tools and applications for cities to create, deploy and manage user-centric applications that capitalize on the latest advances in IoT and cloud computing. Its achievements include a virtualisation framework that provides a uniform way of representing various city data sources, such as IoT devices, legacy devices, social networks and mobile applications.

Leti has built an IoT platform, sensiNact, that provides access via generic application programming interfaces to thousands of physical and virtual devices deployed in the ClouT cities, which use different protocols. With a PC-based configuration, the sensiNact platform is said to handle more than 10 protocols and simultaneous connections to more than 10,000 devices. sensiNact is part of the European open platforms initiative and will soon be released as open source.

Some of the smart city tools developed and tried so far are:

The ‘Sensorised garbage cars’ application which aims to collect atmospheric information via a mobile sensor system installed on garbage collection cars in Fujisawa, Japan. Functionalities have been implemented for dynamically changing sensing parameters, such as the sampling rate of some specific air pollution sensor data.

The Smiley Coupon in Santander. The application provides customized coupons for citizens and tourists, according to their degree of smile: “your smile has a reward”.

This intercontinental field trial gathers information from the different applications developed in the first two years. It is a competition comparing similar data gathered from each city.Specific indexes related to environment, transport or quality of life have been defined and included in a city dashboard available for public display and smartphones.

Author
Peggy Lee

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

Board developer Adlink Technology has released a preview of the Type 7 pin out for the COM Express standard, currently being updated to version 3.0. The new pinout brings 10Gbit Ethernet (GbE) capabilities to the format factor, with potential benefits in space constrained systems in industrial automation and data communication.

The PICMG subcommittee currently defining the COM Express 3.0 specification is chaired by Jeff Munch, CTO of Adlink’s American operations. The preview of the Type 7 pinout definition is intended to allow module manufacturers and customers to start designs before the full COM Express 3.0 specification is published, which is expected to by the end of Q3 2016.

The Type 7 pinout does away with all graphics support, replacing it with up to four 10GbE ports and eight additional PCI Express. This brings the total PCIe support to up to 32 PCIe lanes. In addition, the Type 7 pinout brings out 10GBase-KR signals, meaning board designers can choose between KR-to-KR, KR-to-optical fibre or KR-to-copper. A Network Controller Sideband Interface bus is also supported, allowing for Intelligent Platform Management Interface Board Management Controller support on the carrier board.

Author
Graham Pitcher

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

Toshiba has announced the latest generation of BiCS FLASH, its 3D flash memory. The latest version is a 64 layer device that incorporates 3bit/cell technology, enabling 256Gbit to be stored. Toshiba says its next target is a 512Gbit device, also with 64 layers.

Previously, Toshiba was producing a 48 layer device and the move to 64 layers is said to provide 40% more capacity in the same chip size, along with a lower cost per bit. Applications are expected to include enterprise and consumer solid state drives, smartphones, tablets and memory cards.

The 64 layer devices will be manufactured in New Fab 2 at Yokkaichi Operations, which was opened officially earlier this month. Mass production is scheduled to start in the first half of 2017.

Author
Graham Pitcher

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

Five years ago, New Electronics reported on WorldSkills International. Organised by WorldSkills, a body that brings together industry, government, organisations, and institutions to promote skills education and training for young people, it was intended to promote awareness of the importance of apprenticeships and was the first time this event had ever been held in the UK.

Has the work of bodies like WorldSkills helped to address the shortage of talent that exists in the UK when it comes to the electronics industry?

“Unfortunately, no,” according to Phil Mayo, managing director of Premier EDA Solutions, who is a supporter of WorldSkills. Even though interest in apprenticeships is growing, they still lack the visibility necessary for greater industrial sponsorship. “Either the potential apprentices have no proper knowledge of the range of opportunities out there or companies just aren’t picking them up,” he suggests.

“I have met most of the 250 to 300 people that train with the WorldSkills programme every year,” Mayo said. “As an employer, I would probably take them all if I could because they are bright and they are capable. While apprentices might be lacking in experience, you can work with that.”

Mayo thinks companies need to be more proactive when it comes to looking for apprentices: “You can’t not know apprentices exist these days, you know that they are there. The apprenticeship levy is a big issue for business. But where does a company go to get them? How does it engage? What does it need to do? These are still questions companies frequently ask.”

The government has pledged to put in place the ‘Post-16 skills plan’ recommended by the Independent Panel for Technical Education’s report which looks to simplify the current system so that technical education is provided through 15 routes.

Lord Sainsbury, chair of the panel, said: “We have a serious shortage of technicians in industry at a time when more than 400,000 16 to 24 year olds are unemployed.”

The programmes of study, as well as the required skills and standards, for each of the 15 technical routes will be shaped and defined by employer panel discussions, led by engineers and administered by the independent Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.

Nick Boles, until recently the government’s skills minister and who published the ‘Post-16 skills plan’, said: “While Britain has all the ingredients needed to compete with other skilled nations, we must create a technical education system that can harness that talent. This cannot be the government’s job alone; we must work with employers and post-16 providers to unlock the potential in this country.”

Author
Peggy Lee

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

Researchers from the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, JST PRESTO, and the National Institute for Materials Science, claim to have found a way to overcome capacity loss in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.

One way of improving driving range in electric cars running on lithium-ion batteries is by increasing the battery voltage from the present 4V to 5V. However, the higher voltage is accompanied by a capacity loss of more than 50% after only 100 charge/discharge cycles.

The researchers have developed a 5V lithium-ion battery that can maintain more than 90% of its capacity over 100 cycles by using a superconcentrated lithium based electrolyte.

"The 5V battery using the superconcentrated electrolyte has much higher energy density than current 4V batteries while achieving a comparable power density," said Atsuo Yamada, professor at the University of Tokyo.

He explained that the 5V battery's smaller size and weight also contribute to a longer driving range in electric vehicles.

The capacity loss in most high voltage lithium-ion batteries is related to electrolyte salt stability. A stable electrolyte salt suppresses the dissolution of the battery's transition metal electrode, but simultaneously has the disadvantage of accelerating the dissolution of the battery's aluminium current collector. An unstable electrolyte salt has the exact opposite effects. In either case, the dissolution results in capacity loss.

The researchers have overcome this by mixing a stable lithium salt (LiN[SO2F]2) in a solvent at a high concentration so that close to half of the solution is lithium salt. The superconcentrated solution overcomes the electrolyte trade off due to its 3D liquid structure. The new electrolyte is also safer due to its high thermal stability. The better stability is due to its lower content of organic solvents.

"At present, the biggest challenge is materials cost, because the LiN(SO2F)2 salt is more expensive than currently used LiPF6 salt," Yamada said. "However, the mass production of the LiN(SO2F)2 salt has recently been initiated and is becoming increasingly available at much lower cost. Hence, we expect that the cost will not be a problem in the future. Moreover, the cost of electrolyte is less than 7% of the total battery price."

Credit: Atsuo Yamada

Author
Peggy Lee

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk