Tag Archives: SUNY (State University of New York} Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE)

Science diplomacy: high school age Pakistani students (terror attack survivors) attend NanoDiscovery Institute in New York State

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The visiting students are from the Peshawar Army School in Pakistan, which suffered a terrorist attack in 2014. From the Peshawar School Massacre Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),

On 16 December 2014, seven gunmen affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The militants, all of whom were foreign nationals, included one Chechen, three Arabs and two Afghans. They entered the school and opened fire on school staff and children,[8][9] killing 145 people, including 132 schoolchildren, ranging between eight and eighteen years of age.[10][11] A rescue operation was launched by the Pakistan Army’s Special Services Group (SSG) special forces, who killed all seven terrorists and rescued 960 people.[9][12][13] Chief military spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa said in a press conference that at least 130 people had been injured in the attack.[8]

As of July 29, 2015 seven of the student survivors are visiting New York State to attend a NanoDiscovery Institute program, according to a July 29, 2015 news item on Nanotechnology Now,

In support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s commitment to provide high-tech educational opportunities in New York State, SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE), in partnership with Meridian International Center (Meridian) and with the support of the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, today announced that SUNY Poly CNSE will host a group of students from Peshawar, Pakistan, from July 29 through August 4 [2015] at the institution’s world-class $20 billion Albany NanoTech Complex. The weeklong “NanoDiscovery Institute” will follow a custom-tailored curriculum designed to inspire the students with the limitless potential of the nanosciences. The students, who will take part in a number of nanotechnology-themed activities, presentations, and tours, survived a brutal attack on their school by terrorists last December when more than 140 students and teachers were killed in their classrooms.

A July 29, 2015 SUNY (State University of New York) Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE), news release, which originated the news item, describes the purpose of the visit to CNSE in more detail,

“Governor Andrew Cuomo’s innovation-based educational blueprint not only offers unprecedented opportunities for students in New York State, it also enables the exchange of scientific know-how far beyond its borders and we are thrilled to be able to host these students from Pakistan and engage and inspire them through the power of nanotechnology,” said Dr. Alain Kaloyeros, President and CEO of SUNY Poly. “It has been a pleasure to work with Meridian to create this positive educational experience for these students who have endured more in their young lives than most of us will see in a lifetime. We hope their visit will give them a greater understanding of the nanosciences, as well as an appreciation for America and New York State and our commitment to progress through education, the cornerstone of a better world.”

“We are proud to connect these science-oriented students from Pakistan with the globally recognized educational resources of SUNY Poly CNSE,” said Bonnie Glick, Senior Vice President of Meridian. “This exchange will expose these students to the nanotechnology world through a weeklong visit to SUNY Poly CNSE’s unmatched facilities. This is a perfect way to show Meridian’s mission in action as we seek to share ideas and engage people across borders and cultures to promote global leadership and to help to form future leaders. For these students in particular, this first-of-a-kind opportunity will not erase what happened, but we hope it will provide them with tools to enhance their educations and to foment global collaboration. Through the Nanotechnology Institute at SUNY Poly CNSE, these students will see, concretely, that there is more that unites us than divides us – science will be a powerful unifier.”

During their visit to SUNY Poly CNSE, the visiting Peshawar Army Public School students will create business plans as part of a Nanoeconomics course designed by SUNY Poly CNSE staff members, and they will also participate in nanotechnology career briefings. Two Pakistani high school teachers and a military liaison are accompanying the students as they attend the five-day NanoDiscovery Institute facilitated by SUNY Poly CNSE professors. Four students from the U.S. with similar academic interests will join the group, encouraging cross-cultural interactions. The group will become immersed in the nanosciences through hands on experiments and engaging presentations; they will learn how small a nanometer is and see first-hand New York State’s unique high-tech ecosystem to better understand what is underpinning technological progress and how an education focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) can lead to exciting opportunities. As part of the U.S.-Pakistan Global Leadership and STEM program designed by Meridian to promote global collaboration through the sciences, the students will also engage in a global leadership skills training in Washington, D.C., and participate in cultural activities in New York City.

For a description of all of the activities planned for the students’ two week visit to the US, Shivani Gonzalez offers more detail in a July 29, 2015 article for timesunion.com,

“I am so thankful for this opportunity,” said Hammad, one of the students. (Organizers of the trip asked that the student’s last names not be used by the media.) “I know that this education will help us in the future.”

In December [2014[, the Peshawar school was attacked …

International outrage over the attack prompted the Pakistani government, which has been criticized for its lackluster pursuit of violent extremists, to strengthen its military and legal efforts.

…

The students are in the country for two weeks, and are being hosted by the Meridian International Center in Washington, D.C., where their packed itinerary began earlier this week. In addition to tours of the Pentagon and Capitol, the group met Secretary of State John Kerry.

…

After that [NanoDiscovery Institute], the students will go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown for a different kind of cultural exchange: The visitors will learn how to play baseball, and their U.S. counterparts will learn the fundamentals of cricket. A dual-sports tournament is planned.

The students will also visit West Point to see the similarities and differences with their military school back home.

To finish up the trip, the students will present their final nanotech projects to SUNY Poly staff, and will fly back to Washington to present the projects to U.S. military officials.

What a contrast for those students. In six months they go from surviving a terrorist attack at school to being part of a science diplomacy initiative where they are being ‘wined and dined’.

If you are interested in the Meridian International Center, there is this brief description at the end of the CNSE July 29, 2015 news release about the visit,

Meridian is a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC. For more than 50 years, Meridian has brought international visitors to the United States to engage with their counterparts in government, industry, academia, and civil society. Meridian promotes global leadership through the exchange of ideas, people, and culture. Meridian creates innovative education, cultural, and policy programs that strengthen U.S. engagement with the world through the power of exchange, that prepare public and private sector leaders for a complex global future, and that provide a neutral forum for international collaboration across sectors. For more information, visit meridian.org.

The Meridian website is strongly oriented to visual communication (lots of videos) which is a bit a disadvantage for me at the moment since my web browser, Firefox, has disabled Adobe Flash due to security concerns.

IBM and its working 7nm test chip

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I wrote abut IBM and its plans for a 7nm computer chip last year in a July 11, 2014 posting, which featured IBM and mention of HP Labs and other company’s plans for shrinking their computer chips. Almost one year later, IBM has announced, in a July 9, 2015 IBM news release on PRnewswire.com the accomplishment of a working 7nm test chip,

An alliance led by IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it has produced the semiconductor industry’s first 7nm (nanometer) node test chips with functioning transistors.  The breakthrough, accomplished in partnership with GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung at SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE), could result in the ability to place more than 20 billion tiny switches — transistors — on the fingernail-sized chips that power everything from smartphones to spacecraft.

To achieve the higher performance, lower power and scaling benefits promised by 7nm technology, researchers had to bypass conventional semiconductor manufacturing approaches. Among the novel processes and techniques pioneered by the IBM Research alliance were a number of industry-first innovations, most notably Silicon Germanium (SiGe) channel transistors and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography integration at multiple levels.

Industry experts consider 7nm technology crucial to meeting the anticipated demands of future cloud computing and Big Data systems, cognitive computing, mobile products and other emerging technologies. Part of IBM’s $3 billion, five-year investment in chip R&D (announced in 2014), this accomplishment was made possible through a unique public-private partnership with New York State and joint development alliance with GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Samsung and equipment suppliers. The team is based at SUNY Poly’s NanoTech Complex in Albany [New York state].

“For business and society to get the most out of tomorrow’s computers and devices, scaling to 7nm and beyond is essential,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director of IBM Research. “That’s why IBM has remained committed to an aggressive basic research agenda that continually pushes the limits of semiconductor technology. Working with our partners, this milestone builds on decades of research that has set the pace for the microelectronics industry, and positions us to advance our leadership for years to come.”

Microprocessors utilizing 22nm and 14nm technology power today’s servers, cloud data centers and mobile devices, and 10nm technology is well on the way to becoming a mature technology. The IBM Research-led alliance achieved close to 50 percent area scaling improvements over today’s most advanced technology, introduced SiGe channel material for transistor performance enhancement at 7nm node geometries, process innovations to stack them below 30nm pitch and full integration of EUV lithography at multiple levels. These techniques and scaling could result in at least a 50 percent power/performance improvement for next generation mainframe and POWER systems that will power the Big Data, cloud and mobile era.

“Governor Andrew Cuomo’s trailblazing public-private partnership model is catalyzing historic innovation and advancement. Today’s [July 8, 2015] announcement is just one example of our collaboration with IBM, which furthers New York State’s global leadership in developing next generation technologies,” said Dr. Michael Liehr, SUNY Poly Executive Vice President of Innovation and Technology and Vice President of Research.  “Enabling the first 7nm node transistors is a significant milestone for the entire semiconductor industry as we continue to push beyond the limitations of our current capabilities.”

“Today’s announcement marks the latest achievement in our long history of collaboration to accelerate development of next-generation technology,” said Gary Patton, CTO and Head of Worldwide R&D at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “Through this joint collaborative program based at the Albany NanoTech Complex, we are able to maintain our focus on technology leadership for our clients and partners by helping to address the development challenges central to producing a smaller, faster, more cost efficient generation of semiconductors.”

The 7nm node milestone continues IBM’s legacy of historic contributions to silicon and semiconductor innovation. They include the invention or first implementation of the single cell DRAM, the Dennard Scaling Laws, chemically amplified photoresists, copper interconnect wiring, Silicon on Insulator, strained engineering, multi core microprocessors, immersion lithography, high speed SiGe, High-k gate dielectrics, embedded DRAM, 3D chip stacking and Air gap insulators.

In 2014, they were talking about carbon nanotubes with regard to the 7nm chip, this shift to silicon germanium is interesting.

Sebastian Anthony in a July 9, 2015 article for Ars Technica offers some intriguing insight into the accomplishment and the technology (Note: A link has been removed),

… While it should be stressed that commercial 7nm chips remain at least two years away, this test chip from IBM and its partners is extremely significant for three reasons: it’s a working sub-10nm chip (this is pretty significant in itself); it’s the first commercially viable sub-10nm FinFET logic chip that uses silicon-germanium as the channel material; and it appears to be the first commercially viable design produced with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.

…

Technologically, SiGe and EUV are both very significant. SiGe has higher electron mobility than pure silicon, which makes it better suited for smaller transistors. The gap between two silicon nuclei is about 0.5nm; as the gate width gets ever smaller (about 7nm in this case), the channel becomes so small that the handful of silicon atoms can’t carry enough current. By mixing some germanium into the channel, electron mobility increases, and adequate current can flow. Silicon generally runs into problems at sub-10nm nodes, and we can expect Intel and TSMC to follow a similar path to IBM, GlobalFoundries, and Samsung (aka the Common Platform alliance).

EUV lithography is an more interesting innovation. Basically, as chip features get smaller, you need a narrower beam of light to etch those features accurately, or you need to use multiple patterning (which we won’t go into here). The current state of the art for lithography is a 193nm ArF (argon fluoride) laser; that is, the wavelength is 193nm wide. Complex optics and multiple painstaking steps are required to etch 14nm features using a 193nm light source. EUV has a wavelength of just 13.5nm, which will handily take us down into the sub-10nm realm, but so far it has proven very difficult and expensive to deploy commercially (it has been just around the corner for quite a few years now).

If you’re interested in the nuances, I recommend reading Anthony’s article in its entirety.

One final comment, there was no discussion of electrodes or other metallic components associated with computer chips. The metallic components are a topic of some interest to me (anyway), given some research published by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last year. From my Oct. 14, 2014 posting,

Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has revealed a new property of metal nanoparticles, in this case, silver. From an Oct. 12, 2014 news item on ScienceDaily,

A surprising phenomenon has been found in metal nanoparticles: They appear, from the outside, to be liquid droplets, wobbling and readily changing shape, while their interiors retain a perfectly stable crystal configuration.

The research team behind the finding, led by MIT professor Ju Li, says the work could have important implications for the design of components in nanotechnology, such as metal contacts for molecular electronic circuits. [my emphasis added]

This discovery and others regarding materials and phase changes at ever diminishing sizes hint that a computer with a functioning 7nm chip might be a bit further off than IBM is suggesting.