News : Research

Leti’s M&NEMS technology just keeps on giving, this time in the form of a pressure sensor that is as accurate as the best available capacitive sensors, and even more powerful in terms of linearity and insensitivity to parasite capacities. The sensor can be coupled with M&NEMS accelerometers, gyrometers, and magnetometers on a single chip that […] >>

It is generally accepted that the thermal conductivity of a crystalline material is lowest when the material is in its amorphous form. Researchers from INAC and LiPhy* recently used numerical simulation to show that thermal conductivity could be reduced two- or even three-fold by organizing the crystalline material in super-networks—which means stacking nanostructured multilayers in […] >>

The porosity—and detection capabilities—of chemical and biochemical sensors’ sensitive layers can be improved using a newly developed technique called foaming, where the sensitive layer, covered with a sacrifi cial layer, is annealed. The gases released as a result of the increase in temperature are trapped in the thin layer, causing it to swell—and creating more […] >>

A team of researchers from INAC, LTM, and Institut de Bourgogne showed that it is possible to map optical near-fi eld phenomena in silicon nanocavities without using combined optical-AFM techniques like near-fi eld scanning optical microscopy (SNOM). They did it using a camera, a regular microscope and 0.5 micron fl uorescent beads, achieving resolutions comparable […] >>

A gallium focused ion beam (FIB) was integrated into Leti’s ToF-SIMS spectrometer at its Nanocharacterization platform. The combined system makes it possible to analyze air-sensitive and very heterogeneous materials to depths of up to 100 microns. Research was conducted on air-sensitive lithium-ion battery electrodes and TSVs (through-silicon vias), whose composition is very heterogeneous. In the […] >>