Research Grants Offer Glimpse of Future of Electronics

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The sums aren’t huge, and the research decidedly blue sky, but the US Department of Energy is following through on an Obama-era initiative to fund early-stage research projects aimed at innovative technologies and solutions in advanced manufacturing.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) today announced $35 million in awards to universities, national laboratories, and for-profit and nonprofit partners to a host of universities, national laboratories, and other entities

Among those with specific implications for electronics design and manufacturing:

  • The University of Maryland nabbed almost $2.1 million to improve the balance of electrical-mechanical-thermal properties in materials for electrical wiring, contributing to a future reduction in material usage and energy waste in the nation’s transmission-line networks and in microchips. These new materials could be used to make conductors for power lines with higher strength and higher current carrying capacity and interconnects with longer lifetime in microelectronics.
  • The Dana Farber Cancer Institute received a $1.2 million grant to design and build billions of first-of-their-kind molecular 2D printers, that are atomically precise, and which could produce trillions of atomically precise products to advance atomically precise manufacturing.
  • Zyvex Labs received more than $2.45 million to create and test atomically precise materials in two dimensions using a scanning tunneling microscope that can pull individual hydrogen atoms out of a surface and a coating procedure to substitute other atoms in their place. This project will significantly advance atomically precise manufacturing for applications such as quantum computing and nanoelectronic computing devices.

Many of the other grant recipients are working on concepts similar in nature to the Dana Farber and Zyvex projects whereby atoms would be pushed around and connected. While those projects are targeting clean energy and other applications, it is possible the technology would have applications in electronics as well.

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About Mike

Mike Buetow is president of the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (pcea.net). He previously was editor-in-chief of Circuits Assembly magazine, the leading publication for electronics manufacturing, and PCD&F, the leading publication for printed circuit design and fabrication. He spent 21 years as vice president and editorial director of UP Media Group, for which he oversaw all editorial and production aspects. He has more than 30 years' experience in the electronics industry, including six years at IPC, an electronics trade association, at which he was a technical projects manager and communications director. He has also held editorial positions at SMT Magazine, community newspapers and in book publishing. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois. Follow Mike on Twitter: @mikebuetow