Department of Microelectronics
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science

News

Therapies without drugs -- Tech News

  • Tuesday, 25 February 2020

Fraunhofer researchers Tim Hosman and Vasiliki Giagka are investigating the potential of microimplants to stimulate nerve cells and treat chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes, or Parkinson’s disease. Find out what makes this form of treatment so appealing and which challenges the researchers still have to master.

More ...

Prof. Klaas Bult receives IEEE Donald O. Pederson award

  • Monday, 24 February 2020

The IEEE Solid-State Circuits Award was established by the Board of Directors in 1987. The award was renamed the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits in 2005. Don was a co-founder of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Council, the forerunner of today's Solid-State Circuits Society, in 1966, and he was instrumental in launching the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits that same year. Recipient selection is administered through the Technical Field Awards Council of the IEEE Awards Board. The award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium.

Student Alberto brings wireless monitoring a step closer

  • Saturday, 22 February 2020

In September 2017 Alberto Gancedo started his master programme Microelectronics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS). Alberto’s ambition was bigger than obtaining his degree. His ambition was to develop a small, portable and cheap monitoring device to detect unusual brain activity in premature babies directly after birth. Thanks to donations from EEMCS alumni, Alberto could start his master’s at TU Delft and work towards this ambition. Alberto graduated in the beginning of February 2020 and proudly updates Delft University Fund and EEMCS alumni about his achievements.

More ...

Christos Strydis winner of the Delft Health Competition

  • Friday, 24 January 2020

During the Future Health at TU Delft Symposium of January 23, Christos Strydis (Computer Engineering, Bioelectronics and Neuroscience) won one of the three prizes of 10,000 Euro in the Delft Health Competition.

More ...

Aleksandar Jovic's paper highlighted as an Editor's Pick in Applied Optics

  • Monday, 6 January 2020

The manuscript by Dr. Aleksandar Jovic et al. entitled "A Self-Aligned Micro-Optic Integrated Photonic Platform", recently published in Applied Optics, has been highlighted as Editor's Pick for the journal.

Editor's Picks serve to highlight articles with excellent scientific quality and are representative of the work taking place in a specific field - in this case, integrated phonotics.

Congratulations, Aleksandar and co-authors!

Milica Dostanic wins Best poster award at International MicroNanoConference 2019

  • Monday, 16 December 2019

Milica Dostanic, PhD candidate at the Electronic Components, Technology and Materials (ECTM) group, has won the Best poster award at this year's International MicroNanoConference (iMNC, held in Utrecht, NL) for her poster titled "A miniaturized EHT platform for contractile tissue measurements".

The poster featured joint work between ECTM and Leiden University Medical Center for the development and characterisation of the smallest engineered heart tissues to date.

Congratulations, Milica and co-authors!

Dutch-Japanese astronomical instrument measures 49 shades of far-infrared

  • Wednesday, 4 September 2019
Integrated superconducting spectrometer chip.

The Dutch-Japanese made DESHIMA instrument has passed its first practical tests when measuring the distances and ages of distant galaxies. The core of the instrument is a chip the size of two euro coins that measures 49 shades of far infrared light. The developers of the spectrometer publish the results of their first measurement campaign (first light) on Monday 5 August in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Measuring distances and ages in the universe is a problem. The brightness of a star or a galaxy says little about age. Astronomers bypass this problem by measuring the doppler effect of light from galaxies. The redder the light, the higher the speed, the farther the galaxy. Unfortunately, the redshift of many galaxies in the early universe cannot be measured with visible light, because starlight is shaded by dust clouds surrounding these galaxies. Measuring the redshift of these galaxies requires observing in far infrared.

49 channels

In October 2017, Dutch and Japanese researchers, led by Akira Endo (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands), mounted the special chip on the Japanese ASTE telescope in North Chile. The superconducting chip is developed by Delft University of Technology and SRON, Netherlands Institute for Space Research. The chip contains one antenna, 49 filters and 49 detectors. The antenna captures radiation of various wavelengths. The filters unravel the radiation in 49 tones of infrared. The 49 detectors measure the intensity of the radiation. When a detector picks up a signal, it can be seen as a peak in a graph.

First light

The first tests with the telescope, the so-called first light, were promising. The astronomers first focused the telescope-with-chip on Mars, Saturn and a number of well-known stars and galaxies. When they saw the expected slope in the graph without significant problems, the researchers aimed the telescope at the well-known distant galaxy VV114 and saw the predicted redshift.

The researchers are now working on a chip that can cope with 300 tones of infrared instead of the current 49. This allows them to determine the distances to galaxies that have hitherto been hidden behind dust clouds. In addition, the researchers want to link multiple chips so that they can study multiple galaxies at the same time. The development must lead to a handy-sized imaging spectrometer that is easy to use on a ground based telescope and is a must for use with space telescopes.

Incidentally, the first tests on the telescope in Chile almost failed due to material problems. There was something wrong with the cooling system of the chip. The researchers had brought spare parts for the cooling system, but they had forgotten the pins to align the parts. After searching for hours in the town of San Pedro de Atacama, the researchers came to jeweler Jose Pinto. In Pinto's toolbox, they found a piece of copper wire with exactly the right diameter. With that they could make the forgotten pins. And so the instrument was rescued and the tests could start.

Publications

Grants

The DESHIMA project (http://deshima.ewi.tudelft.nl ) is made possible in part thanks to grants from NWO, JSPS and the ERC.

Contact

More ...