News : Research

After years of research on monomolecular magnets (also called magnetic molecules), scientists have renewed hope that such molecules could one day be used to develop molecular-scale memories. Researchers at INAC recently built a wheel-shaped molecular (uranium-manganese) structure whose hysteresis cycle and energy barrier could be compatible with the applications being targeted. However, these properties were […] >>

Leti researchers recently filed three patents for vibration energy harvesting microsystems. Their new technology counters one of the weaknesses of vibration energy harvesting systems: the systems’ yields drop off sharply when their resonance frequency deviates from the ambient vibration frequency. Currently, the best systems can tolerate vibration frequency differences of just 5%. But the first […] >>

We could one day see electronic components that combine electric and magnetic currents. A Grenoble-based team of researchers from INAC, UJF, Crocus, CNRS, and Thales has just made a step toward this potential breakthrough. The researchers injected spin-polarized electrons into germanium, a material compatible with microelectronics applications, at room temperature. They used a tunnel junction […] >>

Germanium-Antimony-Tellurium, or GST, is a phase-change material that passes from an amorphous to a crystalline state at temperatures of 100°C to 150°C, making it a good candidate for phase-change memory. However, when looking at GST samples under a transmission microscope, scientists observed that these properties actually turn into a disadvantage. During the ion-beam preparation phase, […] >>

Leti researchers Olivier Faynot and Claire Fenouillet-Béranger, along with two engineers from STMicroelectronics, won the 2012 Général Ferrié research in electronics award for their 15 years of work on FD-SOI. Their work has led to the development of a smartphone “super chip” at ST-Ericsson that slashes processing times by up to 35% while lengthening battery […] >>