Launch of World’s Thinnest Waterproof Speaker by MURATA
This newly developed piezoelectric speaker by Murata bears a thickness of only 0.9mm, qualifying it as the industry’s first ultra-thin speaker. The new speaker has a waterproof structure, satisfying the needs of mobile phone manufacturers with growing trend towards the waterproofing of mobile devices. Conventional dynamic speakers use waterproof sheets to cover sound output holes, however, the solution often resulted in degradation of sound quality as well as rise in overall cost. Read more
Development of Ultra Thin Metal Substrate for use in CIGS Solar Cells
Group of researchers at AIST and Toyo Kohan Co., Ltd has successfully developed a low-cost metal substrate for ise in CIGS solar cells offering a 16% conversion efficiency. The new metal uses low carbon steel as the base, providing a low-cost alternative to stainless steel foil. CIGS solar cells offer the highest conversion efficiency among the thin film solar cells and are expected to be used as the post-crystalline silicon solar cell. Read more
Development of High-Storage Capacity Linear Tape Open Cartridge by TDK
TDK Corporation made an announcement on development and successful certification of company’s Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Ultrium 5 cartridge. The LTO Ultrium 5 data cartridge, is company’s fifth generation LTO product comes with data storage capacity of 1.5 TB (3.0 TB with 2:1 compression) and a maximum high data transfer speed of 140 MB/s ( 280 MB/s with 2:1 compression). For achieving this high storage capacity, TDK has used tap that is 12.65 mm wide and has 1,280 recording tracks, plus the tape thickness has been reduced in order for the single cartridge to hold more tape. Read more
Development of Ultra-Thin Fluid Conveyance Pump for Fuel Cells by MURATA
Miniaturization of mobile equipment, created a demand for even smaller batteries with higher capacities, where direct-methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is expected to satisfy this need, however, up to now, peripheral circuits miniaturization, including pumps and decreasing power consumption has hampered its commercialization. To overcome these obstacles, Murata Manufacturing has developed an ultra-thin fluid conveyance device, “Micro-pump MZP Series” capable of being used in fuel cells for mobile equipment such as mobile phones and laptop computers. Read more
Development of Ultra thin HIT Solar Cell by SANYO
Sanyo Electric made an announcement today on development of Ultra thin HIT (Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin-layer) solar cell which by the way is Sanyo’s originally developed technology. The HIT is a hybrid model combining a crystalline silicon substrate and an amorphous silicon thin film. The first announcement on such HIT solar cell by Sanyo was back in May of this year achieving a world’s highest conversion efficiency of 23%. Well this time the conversion efficiency is at 22.8% but the cell thickness is 98?m which is half the thickness of the previous model. This is an important achievement since by reducing the thickness of the silicon wafer in order to save resources and reduce cost would result in less optical absorption which causes the energy conversion efficiency to drop. Read more
Industry’s first ultra thin, ultra long Flexible Printed Circuit
FPC is used to enable the thin wiring possessing to its thin, light, highly flexible and highly dense characteristics. But due to unavailability of thin FPCs, thin cables have been used instead as a wiring material for narrow and long places. The conventional thin wire has inherent issues namely that the thinner the cable the more complex harness-making process becomes which increases the chances for incorrect wiring. Based on this OKI Electric Cable has announced the development of an ultra thin, ultra long flexible printed circuit (FPC). The new FPC has achieved a narrow width of 2mm and a length of up to 3 meter which was so far difficult to make. Read more
