Technology

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. announced they will develop and propose a high-speed NAND flash memory interface, the toggle DDR (double data rate) 2.0, which will support a maximum 400 megabit-per-second (Mbps) data transmission, as an industry standard.

Sony Corp. and Tohoku University have jointly developed a combination of a blue-violet semiconductor laser and a semiconductor amplifier and succeeded in emitting 405nm pulsed laser with the peak output of 100W, which is more than a hundred times the highest peak output of any conventional blue-violet semiconductor laser.

Hitachi, Ltd. and KDDI Corp. announced they have jointly developed a mobile phone with an RFID read/write function and intend to start marketing next year, initially aiming at business use.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced that it has collected a very small amount of gas from the capsule of the asteroid explorer Hayabusa, which returned from asteroid Itokawa to Earth on June 13.

N-MEMS, one of six core fields of the Tsukuba Innovation Arena (TIA), an umbrella organization for government-supported R&D, will begin operations in September upon the completion of the facilities.

Panasonic Corp. has developed a terahertz (THz) detector using a gallium nitride (GaN) transistor that features high sensitivity of 1000V/W at room temperature, which is about two digits higher than the sensitivity of conventional GaAs-based detectors, according to the company. Panasonic expects the transistor to widen terahertz-wave applications by making it possible to build compact terahertz equipment such as surveillance cameras and material analysis systems.

Toshiba Corp. announced that it will supply automotive propulsion motors for Ford's hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) to be marketed in 2012. Using the contract as a bridgehead from which to expand the drive motor business for electric vehicles in the United States, Toshiba plans to begin construction of a drive motor line in January 2011 in Houston, Texas, at the site of Toshiba International Corp.. Production and operation will begin in 2012.

Renewable Energy 2010, an international conference held every two years on renewable energy, which has 12 subcommittees including those on policy and various types of renewable energy ranging from photovoltaic and solar thermal to non-conventional energy, will be held from June 27 to July 2 in Yokohama, near Tokyo.

Sony Corp. has developed an 80-micron-thick, 4.1-inch color OLED display that can be rolled around an 8-mm-diameter cylinder. Sony employed new materials, peri-xanthenoxanthene derivatives, for organic thin-film transistors. The TFTs fabricated with the new materials feature 0.4 cm2/Vs hole mobility, which is about eight times faster than conventional pentacene-based TFTs, according to Sony. Sony presented a paper on the display at SID (Society for Information Display)2010 International Symposium held in Seattle from May 23-27.

Offering a preview of the new prospects opening up in the rapidly changing world of TV broadcasting and communications, NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories (STRL), founded 80 years ago, presented its principal research themes at this year's open house, held in Tokyo from May 27 to May 30.