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nanotimes News in Brief

“nano-cages.” The particles are nano-sized, hexago- nal crystals, each with a tiny metal frame wrapping around and encasing them just like a bird’s cage, but 100 million times smaller. Because the nano- cage is hexagonal, when looking at pictures of them from above, they appear as Stars of David. No one had ever seen hybrid nanoparticles form with such a cage structure before.

J.E. Macdonald, M. Bar Sadan, L. Houben, I Popov, U. Banin: Hybrid Nanoscale in Organic Cages, In: Nature Materials, Volume 9(2010), October 2010, No. 10, pages 810-815, DOI:10.1038/nmat2848: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat2848

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v9/n10/extref/ nmat2848-s1.mov

The IC Industry Awards were presented on Octo- ber 20th at SEMICON Europa 2010. The IC Industry Awards are in their 5th year. It enjoyed an amazing response last year with over 100 companies ente- ring and as importantly, in access of 25,000 votes cast. Winners: http://www.euroasiasemiconductor.com/awards2010/ winners/index.php#Air%20Liquide%20Electronic

Materials - Enabling Award Air Liquide Electronic For: Abs-Sr™ and Star-Ti™: Precursors for STO Deposition” http://www.airliquide.com

10-10/11 :: October/November 2010

Metrology / Test / Yield Award Cascade Microtech, Inc. For: VueTrack technology http://www.cmicro.com

Wafer Processing – FEOL Award Oxford Instruments For: The PlasmaPro System400 http://www.oxinst.com

Wafer Processing – BEOL Award EV Group (EVG) For: EVG770 Automated NIL Stepper http://www.evgroup.com

Subsystems & Components Award Applied Materials For: Applied iSYS http://www.appliedmaterials.com

Fab Management Award MASER Engineering For: Circuit Edit service for sub-100nm IC technology designs http://www.maser.nl

A new polymer-metal material that has sensory properties makes it possible to produce plastic component parts that monitor themselves. This material can be combined with various others and used in a variety of different ways. Researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Techno- logy and Applied Material Research (IFAM) in Bremen, Germany, presented this polymer-metal composite at the ELECTRONICA 2010 fair end of