Last week I identified the 4 energy bands that determined the effectiveness of windows; visible, solar near IR, re-radiated mid IR and thermal convection. Each energy band requires it’s own mitigation strategy, dictated by the available materials. This week I will describe how to create low e windows using design rules for each energy band.

Whether you want to save your wallet, or save your planet; effective insulation of structures is essential. It turns out that windows are much more interesting and challenging design problem than I appreciated. This is a 2 part story, if you hate serials, the whole story is at www.impattern.com.

Last time I started to talk about the solar cell business, and whether there was any realistic opportunity for new technologies given the state of the industry. This is the second of a series of blogs to try and answer this question. If you hate serials, the complete analysis is available on my web site www.impattern.com. Let’s start by looking at the potential for other semiconductors.

Scatterometry is the favored approach to monitor complex 3D nano-structures in production. At SPIE Advanced Lithography, KLA introduced a new generation of its scatterometry metrology system.

Lots to talk about from SPIE Advance Lithography Conference this year; EUV power, multi-beam systems, double patterning, and imprint. I thought I would pick up some highlights here, and then come back and talk about them in detail over the next few weeks.

There were 3 different applications for pyramid patterns this year at Photonics West in San Francisco; improved LED’s, improved absorbers and single quantum dot devices.

It’s the season for IDTech’s conferences, so time for another look at the Printed Electronics (PE) opportunity. At the Europe conference this year, the IDTech’s team drew a distinction between past successes with simple screen printed products such as membrane keyboards and the current thrust for higher functionality.

Once in a while, it is fun to go and listen to what the IC guys are up too…its jaw dropping stuff. The trouble with reeling off the capability in industry standard units