Feed aggregator

Форум інженерів–механіків 2024

Новини - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 21:56
Форум інженерів–механіків 2024
Image
kpi пн, 12/02/2024 - 21:56
Текст

КПІ ім. Ігоря Сікорського вкотре стає центром наукових інновацій та передових технологій у машинобудуванні та авіації, організовуючи масштабні інженерні форуми, як-от Форум інженерів–механіків — щорічний захід від Навчально-наукового механіко-машинобудівного інституту КПІ ім. Ігоря Сікорського.

QPT files patent for die attach process that boosts waste heat removal by up to 15x

Semiconductor today - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 18:31
As the power handled by transistors increases to meet the needs of new applications, power electronics packaging will increasingly struggle to remove waste heat from the die. Independent power electronics company Quantum Power Transformation (QPT) Ltd of Cambridge, UK — which was founded in 2019 and develops gallium nitride (GaN)-based electric motor controls — has hence filed a patent for a novel way to attach dies to heat spreaders or substrates which are typically aluminium nitride (AlN). Named qAttach, QPT says that this provides a much better way to conduct heat away from the die and also increases reliability as the assembly process places less stress on the substrates, which is one of the biggest challenges faced by the high-power semiconductor packaging industry...

Energizer’s PowerSource Pro Battery Generator: Not bad, but you can do better

EDN Network - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 18:21

Back in August, EDN published my coverage of the SLA (sealed lead acid) battery-based Phase2 Energy PowerSource 660Wh 1800-Watt Power Station on sale for $149.99 plus tax at bargains site Meh:

I hypothesized at the time that both it and a Duracell-branded clone, which originally sold for $699.99, were private-label brands of a common design originally sourced from a company called Battery-Biz. And toward the end of that same writeup, I also mentioned a couple of lithium battery-based successor power sources, also Battery-Biz-sourced, among them a $599.99 (versus $1,899.99 original MSRP, believe it or not) Energizer-branded bundle with a 200W solar cell that was also at the time being discount-sold by Meh:

That initial limited-time promotion has subsequently been resurrected several more times (that I’ve seen, maybe more than that) by Meh to date. Why? I’ll let them explain in their own words:

We’ve offered this a bunch now, but we haven’t seen any real drop-off in sales.

The third time I saw it, I decided to take the plunge. The second time, it had been sold in two different configurations: $499 refurbished with a 90-day warranty, or $599 new with full two-year factory warranty. But by the time I got around to acting on my purchase aspiration, refurb inventory was depleted. “No problem,” I thought this time, “what’s available for sale is only $100 more, is brand new, and comes with a much longer warranty period.” Hold that thought.

Here are more stock photos and infographic images from the Battery-Biz website product page (and here’s the user manual, linked to from that same page):

Along with a few more stock images from the promotion page on Meh’s website:

And now, some images of my unit, both in action while being initially charged and accompanying its SLA battery-based sibling:

So why did decide to pull the purchase trigger, aside from out of engineering curiosity? While the Phase2 Energy PowerSource Power Station remains a perfectly acceptable solution for residential backup power in utility outage situations (which we unfortunately seem to be increasingly experiencing of late), as I mentioned back in September, it’s quite a (carrying handles-included, but still) boat anchor. The Energizer PowerSource Pro Battery Generator is comparatively quite svelte: nearly half the total volume (15.35” x 9.5” x 8.8”, versus 19.9″ x 12.8″ x 8.9″) and less than half the weight (23 lbs., versus 58.8 lbs.). However, even though it’s lighter, its battery has 50% higher capacity (991 Wh versus 660 Wh). It recharges faster too: 2 hours to “full” on AC from an initially empty state, versus 10 hours. Its inverter-driven AC outputs are pure sine wave in form, versus simulated. It provides one more DC output, that being 100W USB-C with Power Delivery cognizance. And IMHO, it looks cool, too.

That all said, I actually decided to not keep it (and by the way, Meh was stellar in handling the return, going as far as issuing me a full refund while the bundle was still enroute back to them). Cons of the Energizer PowerSource Pro Battery Generator compared to the Phase2 Energy PowerSource Power Station precursor include:

  • Lower cumulative inverter output power—1200-W versus 1440-W continuous/1800-W surge—with the lack of surge support in the Energizer product case due both to the comparative battery technologies in use and the lack of circuitry support (versus, say, the EcoFlow units I told you about in the recent Holiday Shopping Guide for Engineers)
  • Lack of support for “chaining” the internal battery to an external supplemental one for runtime extension
  • And a permanently attached topside handle, making it difficult to stack other things on top of the Energizer unit should I want to take it on a trip in my camper, for example.

So far, these are minor “nits”. This next one’s more notable, however. As I also mentioned in the recent Holiday Shopping Guide for Engineers, Battery-Biz and Energizer were vague upfront about the exact battery formulation in use with the PowerSource Pro Battery Generator, referring to it only as a “lithium-ion”. Turns out, it’s NMC (Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt); no, I don’t know why there’s no upfront “L” in the acronym, either. NMC batteries are typically spec’d for only a few hundred recharge cycles before they need to be replaced. Ironically, this is comparable to the Phase2 Energy PowerSource Power Station’s AGM (absorbed glass mat) SLA battery cycle spec. But it’s much lower than the several thousand cycles oft-touted for LiFePO₄ (lithium iron phosphate), also known as LFP (lithium ferrophosphate), counterparts.

And even this might not have been enough to prompt a return-and-refund request, given the compelling bundle price, except for two other “gotchas”. For one thing, the Energizer PowerSource Pro Battery Generator arrived with obvious already-used cosmetic evidence, contrary to the brand-new claimed condition in the promotion (to be clear, I blame Battery-Biz, not Meh, for this seeming bait-and-switch):

Who knows how many recharge cycles that NMC battery already had on it when I got it?

The accompanying solar panel was also pre-owned, it turns out, with similar cosmetic evidence, plus it arrived damage. I’ll save more details on this twist for my next post in this series. Until then, and as always, please sound off with your thoughts in the comments!

Brian Dipert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edge AI and Vision Alliance, and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, the company’s online newsletter.

Related Content

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-inread'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-native'); }); -->

The post Energizer’s PowerSource Pro Battery Generator: Not bad, but you can do better appeared first on EDN.

КПІ ім. Ігоря Сікорського офіційно став частиною IREG Observatory!

Новини - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 12:46
КПІ ім. Ігоря Сікорського офіційно став частиною IREG Observatory!
Image
kpi пн, 12/02/2024 - 12:46
Текст

З гордістю повідомляємо, що наш університет отримав членство у IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence – глобальної організації, яка визначає стандарти академічних рейтингів та сприяє поширенню принципів прозорості й академічної досконалості.

IP players prominent in chiplet’s 2024 diary

EDN Network - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 12:28

Chiplets—discrete semiconductor components co-designed and manufactured separately before being integrated into a larger system—are emerging as a groundbreaking approach to addressing many of the challenges faced by monolithic system-on-chip (SoC) designs. They have also become a major venue for increasing transistor density as Moore’s Law slows down.

IDTechEx report “Chiplet Technology 2025-2035: Technology, Opportunities, Applications” asserts that the chiplets approach resembles an SoC on a module, where each chiplet is designed to function in conjunction with others, necessitating co-optimization in design. Moreover, chiplets are increasingly associated with heterogeneous integration and advanced packaging technologies.

While large semiconductor outfits like AMD and Intel were initially prominent in the chiplets world, IP players are now increasingly visible in showcasing the potential of chiplets. That includes established IP players like Arm and Cadence as well as upstarts such as Alphawave Semi.

 

Cadence’s Arm-based system chiplet

Cadence joined hands with Arm in March 2024 to deliver a chiplet-based reference design, and the outcome of this collaboration is what Cadence calls the industry’s first system chiplet. It integrates processors, system IP, and memory IP within a single package while interconnected through the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) standard interface.

Figure 1 The system chiplet comprises components such as a system processor, safety management processor, controllers, and PHY IPs for LPDDR5 and UCIe. Source: Cadence

The system chiplet—complying with Arm’s Chiplet System Architecture (CSA)—features of the overall multi-chiplet SoC functionality. It accommodates up to 64 GB/s peak bandwidth for UCIe IP and 32 GB/s peak memory bandwidth for LPDDR5 IP.

AI accelerator chiplet

Another SoC-like emulation on a chiplet platform comes from South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions, which calls its chiplet-based compute accelerator SoC “REBEL. This AI accelerator—designed for generative AI workloads in AI and hyperscale data centers—employs Alphawave Semi’s multiprotocol I/O connectivity chiplets, which integrate PCIe 6.0, CXL 3.1, and Ethernet subsystems with UCIe 2.0 die-to-die connectivity.

Figure 2 The UCIe subsystem serves as the foundation for Rebellions’ REBEL chiplet. Source: Alphawave Semi

It’s another example of a customizable design employing high-speed connectivity and interoperable chiplet architectures. As a result, the chiplet can be deployed as modular building blocks, scalable from single cards to full racks.

The above developments demonstrate how chiplets can help overcome Moore’s Law limits while enhancing function density. Furthermore, they showcase how the chiplets ecosystem allows companies to source different parts from multiple suppliers across various regions.

Related Content

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-inread'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-native'); }); -->

The post IP players prominent in chiplet’s 2024 diary appeared first on EDN.

SemiLEDs’ revenue falls by 13.3% for full fiscal year, but stabilized in Q4

Semiconductor today - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 12:13
For its fiscal full-year (to end-August), LED chip and component maker SemiLEDs Corp of Hsinchu, Taiwan says that its revenue fell by 13.3% from $5.979m for 2023 to $5.183m for 2024. However, although fiscal fourth-quarter revenue was down on $1.453m in Q4/2023 to $1.324m in Q4/2024, this is level with third-quarter 2024....

Australia’s MTM to develop US-based critical materials recovery for Indium Corp

Semiconductor today - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 12:01
A memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been signed for MTM Critical Metals Ltd of West Perth, WA, Australia to develop a US-based processing solution using its Flash Joule Heating (FJH) technology to recover high-value metals — including gallium, germanium, indium and tin — from various scrap sources provided by Indium Corp of Clinton, NY, USA (a supplier of refined gallium, germanium, indium and other specialty technology metals)...

Infineon wins German Sustainability Award in category ‘Electrical Engineering and Electronics’

Semiconductor today - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 11:45
Infineon Technologies AG of Munich, Germany has won the German Sustainability Award in the ‘Electrical Engineering and Electronics’ category. “Infineon has assumed a leading role in the field of sustainability and serves the sector as a ‘beacon’ for successful transformation,” the judges stated. The German Sustainability Award recognizes companies that make effective and exemplary contributions to transformation and that function as role models within their industry...

IO-Link actuator board from STMicroelectronics delivers turnkey reference design for industrial monitoring and appliances

ELE Times - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 11:02

ST has introduced an IO-Link reference design for industrial beacons and home-appliance alarms, delivered ready-to-use as a fully built board complete with protocol stack and application software.

The EVLIOL4LSV1 board leverages ST’s L6364Q dual-channel IO-Link transceiver to handle communications and the IPS4260L intelligent low-side power switch for driving the indicator lights. The board can be directly connected to signaling systems such as smart tower lights used in factory automation, funnel material alarms for quantity-remaining or urgency-level awareness, and other system warnings. It also provides a fast way to test the IPS4260L and L6364Q ICs and has a 4-pin M12 connector for an IO-LINK master and a 5-pin SWD connector for programming.

An STM32G071CB microcontroller, which hosts the ST proprietary IO-Link demo stack and the application software, handles system control and diagnostics, communicating with the transceiver and low-side switch.

The L6364Q transceiver is fully protected and supports standardized IO-Link communication speeds including 38.4kbit/s COM2 and 230.4kbit/s COM3. The transceiver can operate in single or multibyte mode, as well as in transparent mode delegating control of IO-Link communications to the microcontroller by a simple URT interface. The in-built protection ensures EMC immunity up to 2.5kVpk surge pulse/500Ω coupling without additional protection elements.

The IPS4260L low-side driver has four outputs for driving loads with one side connected to supply voltage, each individually controlled by a signal such as a digital microcontroller output. It has a wide operating-voltage range, from 8V to 50V, and the current for each output can be independently programmed from 0.5A to 3.0A. The IC integrates overload and overtemperature protection for each channel and provides open-load, overload, and overtemperature diagnostic signals to aid system management and enhance reliability. The reference design also features ST’s SMBJ30CA TVS (transient-voltage suppression) diode to withstand surge pulses with 2Ω coupling on the supply rail.

The post IO-Link actuator board from STMicroelectronics delivers turnkey reference design for industrial monitoring and appliances appeared first on ELE Times.

Відбувся півфінальний матч студентського чоловічого чемпіонату команд м. Києва з баскетболу

Новини - Sat, 11/30/2024 - 20:15
Відбувся півфінальний матч студентського чоловічого чемпіонату команд м. Києва з баскетболу
Image
kpi сб, 11/30/2024 - 20:15
Текст

Збірна команда КПІ ім. Ігоря Сікорського (капітан Антон Костик, Навчально-науковий видавничо-поліграфічний інститут, НН ВПІ) приймала команду КНЕУ. Наша команда впевнено перемогла з рахунком 84:74!

Weekly discussion, complaint, and rant thread

Reddit:Electronics - Sat, 11/30/2024 - 18:00

Open to anything, including discussions, complaints, and rants.

Sub rules do not apply, so don't bother reporting incivility, off-topic, or spam.

Reddit-wide rules do apply.

To see the newest posts, sort the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top").

submitted by /u/AutoModerator
[link] [comments]

📢 Оголошено конкурс на номінацію “Молодий викладач-дослідник” 2024 року

Новини - Fri, 11/29/2024 - 20:55
📢 Оголошено конкурс на номінацію “Молодий викладач-дослідник” 2024 року
Image
kpi пт, 11/29/2024 - 20:55
Текст

🔹 У конкурсі на номінацію «Молодий викладач-дослідник» можуть брати участь науково-педагогічні працівники, основним місцем роботи яких є КПІ ім.

Договір про співпрацю із Інститутом фізичної хімії ім. Л.В. Писаржевського

Новини - Fri, 11/29/2024 - 20:41
Договір про співпрацю із Інститутом фізичної хімії ім. Л.В. Писаржевського
Image
kpi пт, 11/29/2024 - 20:41
Текст

Київські політехніки разом з Інститутом фізичної хімії ім. Л. В. Писаржевського Національної академії наук України готові до реалізації спільних надважливих наукових проєктів!

Wireless fabric-based charging

EDN Network - Fri, 11/29/2024 - 16:59

You’ve likely read or seen video reports of various university research projects which use fabric—usually fashioned into a shirt—as an energy-harvesting arrangement. Some of these use fabrics which have been treated to generate small amounts of power via an enhanced triboelectric effect and wearer frictional movement, others have been modified to functions as thermoelectric generators (TEGs) based on body heat, and a few even try to fabricate solar cells on the material to catch ambient light.

Once again, it’s the concept of “something for (almost) nothing” with respect to energy harvesting (or scavenging) which is the lure and headline-grabber. It all sounds so attractive and enticing, and makes a lot of sense, at least in theory.

Of course, “in theory” is one thing and “in practice” is often another. Although some of these developments have been heralded in press releases along the lines of “energy harvesting from your own body to charge your smartphone” or similar, the reality is different. As far as I have been able to find out through some basic searches, none of these have been converted into standard consumer products, although some are being used for specialized sensor systems such as for athletes.

There’s a lot more to a garment than just its fabric. In the case of energy harvesting, there are connections, storage (battery or supercap), some power-management electronics, normal use and abuse, wash cycles, and more.

Recent development

However, there’s the complement of using fabrics and shirts for energy harvesting, and that’s using them for energy capture. A recent project from Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania, and Accenture Labs team has devised in a process for using MXene ink to print a textile energy grid that can be charged wirelessly at 140 kilohertz

What’s “MXene” ink? It’s a nanomaterial substance which Drexel has been involved with for quite a while and with which they have considerable experience. Their work centers on the process and viability of building a small-scale power “grid” by printing it on nonwoven cotton textiles with an ink composed of MXene. MXenes were created at Drexel and are simultaneously highly conductive yet durable enough to withstand the folding, stretching and washing that clothing endures.

[More formally, MXenes are a family of two-dimensional (2D) carbides or nitrides with the formula Mn+1XnTx where n = 1, 2, 3, or 4; M is an early transition metal, X is either carbon and/or nitrogen, and T is a surface termination bonded to the M element (e.g., OH, O, F, or Cl).]

The team’s textile grid was printed on a lightweight, flexible, cotton substrate the size of a small patch. It includes a printed resonator coil, which they called an MX-coil, that can convert impinging RF energy via induction and use it to charge a series of three textile supercapacitors (also previously developed by Drexel and Accenture Labs) that can store energy and use it to power electronic devices.

For various reasons, they chose to use direct-ink-write printing (DIW) for prototyping and development of the MX-coils. They had to perform a rheological analysis as there are several different shear rates during DIW printing, with a high shear through the writing needle but low shear as a deposited material on the substrate. As a shear-thinning material, MXene ink has low viscosity at high shear rates, allowing it to flow easily through the needle, but high viscosity at low shear, meaning that it retains its printed geometry without spreading on the substrate, Figure 1.

Figure 1 Rheological data on a MXene ink. a) Shear rate ramp, b) amplitude sweep, and c) frequency sweep. d) Schematic depicting a direct-ink-write that is used to print wireless charging MXene coils. e) A photograph of a 5×5-cm MX-coil. Light micrographs and nanoCT images of prints on f) hydrophobic and g) hydrophilic woven cotton, showing superior deposition onto hydrophilic cotton. Source: Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania, and Accenture Labs

They evaluated several different woven-cotton substrates for the best print quality. Initial coil designs were modeled in MATLAB using a conductivity of 20,000 siemens/cm and a thickness of 10 µm as assumptions for the MXene trace. The coils were modeled using a140 kHz transmit frequency, which is within the range of the Qi standard.

While this modeling provided a solid design framework, many of the optimizing parameters had to be altered to accommodate the engineering challenges due to practical limitations, primarily based on the surface roughness of the textile surface. To test the effectiveness of MX-coils, they isolated several parameters such as shape, number of turns, and trace pitch to find an optimum combination.

Results

They fabricated an MX-coil with a 1200-µm pitch, 10 turns, and 40 passes (resistance = 80 Ω) to analyze how effectively MXcoils can charge MXene-textile supercapacitors capable of powering on-body electronics and transmitting data via Bluetooth, Figure 2.

Figure 2 a) Schematic of MXene-textile supercapacitor that is being powered by the MX-coil. b) Schematic of testing setup. c) Curves of MX-coil charge and 2 mA discharge. d) Discharging time at 2 mA as a function of MX-coil charging time. e) MX-coil charging current and MXene-textile supercapacitor voltage. f) Powering an Artemis Nano microcontroller for BLE broadcast with MXene-textile supercapacitor charged with MX-coil. Source: Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania, and Accenture Labs

A DC power supply was used to feed 10 V into the transmitter-coil circuitry where power was transferred wirelessly to the MX-coil. AC power was then diverted through a battery-management system that rectifies the signal and limits the voltage going into the supercapacitor. The charging is collected on a potentiostat, voltage data is collected by measuring the voltage at the supercapacitor terminals, and current data is collected in series between the LTC3331 power-management board and the supercapacitor.

The assessed power transfer at up to 10% efficiency, resulting in 100 milliwatts of power directly applied to textiles. They also used it to charge a MXene-textile supercapacitor, introducing the idea of an on-garment energy grid fully made of MXene. Additionally, they showed that MXcoils are capable of directly powering MXene-based surface electromyographic (sEMG) sensors with wireless live data transmission, using an Artemis Nano microcontroller for BLE broadcast.

The project also demonstrated some of the unique challenges faced by flexible, fabric-based charging schemes. They saw significant degradation of the cell over time; however, they could “reconstitute” the cell by squishing it under approximately 10 kilograms for several hours. This led them to speculate that they were losing contact between the carbon foil tabs and the MXene-textile electrodes rather than observing a breakdown of the electrodes themselves.

The work is detailed in their paper “MXene-enabled textile-based energy grid utilizing wireless charging” published in Material Today. The paper has the usual discussion, but also has exposition of the fabrication techniques, test arrangement, production and test equipment used, and more in a supplement at the end.

What’s your view on wireless charging of fabric and clothes? Is it a discovery waiting to hit some inflection point, or are the practicalities of fabrication, longevity, and usefulness too daunting? Will it be limited to being an academic research project or will it find a role in some specialty application niches?

Bill Schweber is an EE who has written three textbooks, hundreds of technical articles, opinion columns, and product features.

Related Content

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-inread'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-native'); }); -->

The post Wireless fabric-based charging appeared first on EDN.

ams OSRAM and Fraunhofer IZM win Deutscher Zukunftspreis

Semiconductor today - Fri, 11/29/2024 - 12:45
At a formal ceremony in Berlin, Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier presented the Deutscher Zukunftspreis 2024 (the German Future Award, the Federal President’s Award for Innovation in Science and Technology) to a team led by Dr Norwin von Malm and Stefan Grötsch of ams OSRAM GmbH of Premstätten, Austria and Munich, Germany and Dr Hermann Oppermann of the Berlin-based Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM) for the technological implementation of their idea — an LED matrix that turns car headlights into projectors — which opens up new possibilities for innovative designs due to the high-resolution light distribution and energy efficiency. This is the tenth Deutscher Zukunftspreis for Fraunhofer Institute, and the first for Fraunhofer IZM...

Pages

Subscribe to Кафедра Електронної Інженерії aggregator