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Plessey returns to the limelight with unique silicon process
Feb
Plymouth-based Plessey is the UK’s only LED maker, and the only LED maker in the world commercially making LEDs on silicon substrates.
The driving force behind this seemingly quintessential British semiconductor firm is actually a Canadian, Michael LeGoff, who a decade ago resurrected the Plessey name using ex-Plessey resources (see history box, below).
The fi…
Capacitance-to-digital front-end for sensing works on harvested energy
Feb
AMS has announced a configurable capacitive sensing front end which allows speed and resolution to be traded to optimise designs.
Called PCap04, it can capture and digitise 50,000 times per second at its fastest setting, or achieve 8aF resolution at its most sensitive.
“Configurability also enables sensor manufacturers to trade measurement speed off against powe…
Partner chip adds high-grade security to IoT MCUs
Feb
Called the DS28E38 secure authenticator, it includes security keys created on-die by a ‘physically un-cloneable function’ (PUF), which the firm is branding ChipDNA.
“We looked at existing PUF designs – we would have bought one, but they fell short,” said Maxim v-p of security business Dan Loomis, who warned of continuing poor IoT security at the DS28E…
Pushing the boundaries of UV LED power
Feb
The optical outputs are expected to be:
>20mW at 300±10nm
>140mW at 280±10nm
>80mW at 260±10nm
One of the project aims is to make sources that are sufficiently long-lived to replace mercury-based sources in production, disinfection, life sciences and medicine, and to open up new applications.…
CES: Samsung curves 34in QLED monitor and adds Thunderbolt
Feb
“The CJ791 monitor is the first curved monitor to feature Intel’s Thunderbolt 3 connectivity,” said Samsung. “Designed for entertainment and business audiences, the 34in model aligns single-source power and processing speed with an exceptional picture quality for a comfortable and productive user experience.”
Through a single Thunderbolt 3 cable, users …
Avnet and Aaware enhance sound capture for AI applications
Feb
It is designed to help development teams create far-field, voice-to-machine communications functionality that is more natural and robust than available today, says Jim Beneke, vice president, engineering and technology at Avnet. He adds: “This versatile technology not only solves the problem of cancelling noise, echo and reverb that often confuse many popular cl…
In-display fingerprint sensors to make breakthrough this year
Feb
Phome makers recognize that there is insufficient space on the front of smartphones for a standard capacitive fingerprint sensor and have turned to in-display fingerprint sensors.
At the end of 2016, Synaptics released UnderGlass, an optical solution of fingerprint sensing, which overcomes the limitation that capacitive solutions cannot sense through the glass …
Microsemi products free from Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities
Feb
“As a leader in security, we strive to ensure our products are immune to both existing and potential new threats or vulnerabilities,” says Microsemi CTO Jim Aralis, “as soon as news broke about Meltdown and Spectre, Microsemi immediately assessed its existing products with thorough analysis of the architecture and intellectual property (IP) blocks with its i…
Peregrine Semiconductor celebrates 30th anniversary with name change
Feb
On the occasion of its 30th anniversary and the shipment of its four billionth chip, Peregrine Semiconductor has changed its name to pSemi. The Murata company has announced that it will broaden its scope and portfolio to include power management, connected sensors, optical transceivers, antenna tuning and RF front end products.
“We’ve challenged the pSemi team …
Panasonic introduces small, low-loss metallised polypropylene film capacitors
Feb
ECWFE capacitors have been designed with non-inductive, low acoustic emission, construction with a flame retardant plastic case and come with a built-in fuse function.
During manufacture, moulds are incubated to allow the material to cure before vacuum treatment to remove excess air bubbles.
“The durable outer box construction of the ECWFE series capacitors give…
EW: Microchip 8bit MCUs get up to 128kbyte flash
Feb
The firm has gone big on its ‘core independent peripherals’ (CIP) to allow functions to be implemented in hardware, saving code, validation time, core overhead, and power consumption, said Microchip.
Intended for automotive, industrial control, IoT, medical and white goods, they include peripherals for safety critical applications including cyclic redundancy …
There is now an alternative to solid tantalum capacitors
Feb
In specifying the ideal capacitor most designers would start with high volumetric efficiency and then consider miniaturised packages and capacitance stability over applied voltage, frequency, temperature and time.
A low equivalent series resistance (ESR), noise-free operation, high ripple-current handling capability, and a decades-long life expectancy would also fe…
TDK claims ‘smallest’ choke for automotive
Feb
TDK claims to have created the smallest common-mode choke for automotive Ethernet applications.
Its dimensions are 3.2 mm x 2.5 mm x 2.5 mm.
The ACT1210L choke, which is qualified to AEC-Q200, retains the Scd21 mode conversion characteristic of the previous generation product, the ACT45L.
According to the supplier, this key parameter expresses the amplitude relat…
‘Moth eye’ structure banishes reflections from display surface
Feb
Unlike multi-layered anti-reflection coatings, this one is inherently broadband, and works at a wide range of angles.
The structure has been formed into the surface of a hard coating (>’3H’ in pencil terms) on a flexible substrate.
To make it, the flexible film with an un-cured organic hard coating is pressed against a sheet of glass on which a closely-packe…
Bridgetek adds WiFi to its CleO smart display
Feb
Transmitting and receiving in the 2.4 GHz frequency band, the CleO35-WiFi module is compliant with the commonly used IEEE 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi standards.
With the objective of enabling the control and monitoring of smart devices within the domestic environment, it can achieve +20dBm output power when in 802.11b mode.
Support for WPA and WPA2 wireless security safeg…