A resistor is a type of electrical component that can provide current resistance, benefitting electronic circuits of all types. With a resistor, current flow may be reduced, signal levels can be adjusted, voltages may be divided, and much more. As such, resistors are extremely common for the protection of electrical networks and electronic equipment. Depending on the application, there are a variety of resistor types that may be used, each providing their own unique benefits for various applications. Read more >>

Transistors have been an integral part of computing for many years and are the foundation of all microchip technology. Transistors have been scaled down in size to nano-levels to where we can fit billions of electronic transistors on a single microchip. However, there’s a limit. So, what’s next? Memristors. Memristors have much more capacity to improve power and performance far beyond what transistors are capable of. They pack more power in a smaller area, have less power needs, and are resistant to radiation. Read more >>

Analog Devices and Microsemi Corporation have recently collaborated and introduced the first ever high-power evaluation board for the half-bridge SiC power modules. These evaluation boards will go up to 1200 V and 50 A at a two hundred kHz switching frequency. This new isolated board has been produced to upgrade design reliability and lowering the need for the production of additional prototypes. This will maximize time, lower costs, and reduce the time needed to market towards power conversion and energy storage customers. Read more >>

TE Connectivity, is offering the first 630 V power class connector for small servo motors that provides all-in-one connectivity for power, signal and data. Their Intercontec M12 Motor Connector was released in September 2017, and is a compact, robust metal connector for installations based on one-cable solutions and covers the digital transmission of 2- and 4- wire encoder protocols like Hiperface DSL, BiSS, EnDat 2.2, ACURO link and SCS open link. It has applications for servo, stepper, linear, and spindle motors. Read more >>

Researchers from the Korean Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology developed a method to make transistor-type active-matrix pressure sensors using foldable substrates and air-dielectric layers. Read more >>

STMicroelectronics brings a new developed board to the market with less power consumption than before, this is very critical for saving energy and creating a long lasting products. STMicroelectronics is giving developers a chance to explore and evaluate Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology. Also, the board is designed using the lowest power technology such as the LoRaWan module which is available in the market today. The size of the board is very small and the power consumption is around 1.2µA. There are different electronic components and modules such as Murata that integrates an STM32L072CZ micro-controller (MCU). This model utilizes an improved modem which allows low power and long range spread-spectrum communication as it is using a minimum amount of power consumption. Also, the module is designed to be an open source so developers have access to the STM32L072 MCU. Read more >>

Electronic components are always changing and developing to the better, every year the electronic devices and components are being improved. Flex Logix has signed a deal with DARPA to allow government agencies that design ICs for the government, the US government, to use Flex Logix’s EFLX arrays. Flex Logix is allowing EFLX arrays in TSMC 16FFC process node from 2.5K to 122.5K LUTs in order to allow government companies and agencies to reconfigure RTL during any point of their design process. Chip designers will appreciate this kind of freedom because it will allow them to innovate more freely and come up with a high performance design, save energy in the process and even decrease the size and weight of their chip system. This will also allow designers to create chips that can work on multiple applications and upgrade the chip when it’s being used already. Read more >>

On September 5th 2016, Peggy Lee wrote an article for New Electronics talking about how carbon nanotube transistors have been found to outperform silicon. This study was founded by researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison lab. At this lab, material engineers were able to outperform the silicon transistors by 1.9 times in terms of currents. This is considered a huge breakdown for those in the nanotechnology industry. This was something that has been considered a dream for over 20 years for those in the industry. Here is what Professor Michael Arnold has said about the findings. "This achievement has been a dream of nanotechnology for the last 20 years. The hype and importance of carbon nanotubes is much realized yet, and that has kind of soured many people's outlook. But we think the hype is deserved. It has just taken decades of work for the materials science to catch up and allow us to effectively harness these materials. This breakthrough in carbon nanotube transistor performance is a critical advance toward exploiting carbon nanotubes in logic, high-speed communications, and other semiconductor electronics technologies." Not only are the carbon nanotube transistors able to outperform silicon transistors by 1.9 times in terms of currents, the actual performance of the carbon nanotubes is roughly 5 times faster. In addition to this, the carbon nanotubes are also five times better in terms of energy efficiency. In doing so, this could amount to huge gains in terms of bandwidth speeds of wireless communication devices. Read more >>

According to Lucio Di Jasio, Microchip’s strategic marketing manager for 8bit MCUs, nothing bad is going to happen to Atmel’s 8bit microcontrollers now that Microchip has acquired the company. With a new generation of AVRs coming in the summer there should be no reservations or doubts about the 8bit AVR’s future. Di Jasio openly gushed about his longstanding admiration for the AVR architecture ever since it exploded on the scene back in 1997. Di Jasio also marvels at how far it has come along since the first PIC was introduced back in 1976 and how over two decades of architectural innovations have brought along advantages and advancements in its development. Read more >>

Leading industrial lighting products manufacturer Larson Electronics has just unveiled plans to sell a brand new 18 Watt LED blasting gun light.  Larson Electronics has been a major player in the industrial lighting industry for well over decade, and their product line has grown to include everything from explosion proof light fixtures to high mast light towers. Larson’s new blast gun light only serves to expand their already impressive product line. Read more >>