Author Archives: Walt

About Walt

I have been involved in various aspects of nanotechnology since the late 1970s. My interest in promoting nano-safety began in 2006 and produced a white paper in 2007 explaining the four pillars of nano-safety. I am a technology futurist and is currently focused on nanoelectronics, single digit nanomaterials, and 3D printing at the nanoscale. My experience includes three startups, two of which I founded, 13 years at SEMATECH, where I was a Senior Fellow of the technical staff when I left, and 12 years at General Electric with nine of them on corporate staff. I have a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, an MBA from James Madison University, and a B.S. in Physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

More Optical Metamaterials

Previous blogs have covered metamaterials for optics including an invisibility cloak.  Reference 1 moves into the shorter wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light.  It is interesting in that [..]

Metamaterials, Semiconductor Technology

The Issue with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The issue of AI has been in the headlines of major newspapers with all kinds of doom projections.  Reference 1 from earlier this year has 11 areas that [..]

Science, Technology

3-D and Electronics

There has been a lot written about 2-D transistors and the coming applications involving the properties of the circuitry and its ability to create denser circuitry.  There are [..]

Electronics, Semiconductor Technology, Uncategorized

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Nano Technology

“AI” has become a “hot” topic in both technical publications and general newspapers.  There have been multiple stories of ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0 and other Chatbots [Ref 1]. [..]

Technology

New transistors in the nano realm

The current structures for semiconductor central processing units (CPUs) are being designed and produced with some dimensions in the single digit nanometer realm.  Beside being hard to make, [..]

Electronics, Metamaterials, Nanotechnology

More nanomaterials, or is it metamaterials, or semiconductors?

Last month’s blog covered changes that are coming in the structure of semiconductor transistors.  With the announcement of 3nm devices [Ref. 1}, there is no uncertainty that the [..]

Metamaterials, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology

A New Year, New Opportunities

Semiconductors are always in the news as the drive for greater capabilities in ever decreasing package sizes.  With the announcement of 3nm node devices going into production, the [..]

Semiconductor Technology

Another year of interesting developments

Energy from Fusion – As reported in Phys.Org [Ref. 1] a breakthrough announcement in fusion came from Lawrence Livermore National Labs.  For the first time an experiment in [..]

Science

Chiplets – What are semiconductor chiplets and why needed

As there are more references to the development of semiconductor chiplets, it might be useful to consider what they are and why they are needed. As the size [..]

Semiconductor Technology

Where Wafer Scale Integration Came From

This is a story that starts in the early days of electronics.  As new concepts were developed for applications employing electricity, there was a need to develop a [..]

Semiconductor Technology