Currently, the global 5G network, cloud computing, and data center industries are experiencing rapid development. The continuous growth of data center traffic has driven the vigorous progress in high-speed optical transceivers for optical interconnection within data centers. The electro-absorption modulated laser (EML), which is widely used in optical fiber communications, data centers, and high-speed data transmission systems, represents a high-performance photoelectric conversion device. Compared to traditional directly modulated lasers (DMLs), EMLs demonstrate lower frequency chirp and higher modulation bandwidth, enabling support for higher data rates and longer transmission distances. This article introduces the composition, working principles, manufacturing processes, and applications of EMLs. It reviews the progress on advanced indium phosphide (InP)-based EML devices from research institutions worldwide, while summarizing and comparing data transmission rates and key technical approaches across various studies.

With the rapid technological innovation in materials engineering and device integration, a wide variety of textile-based wearable biosensors have emerged as promising platforms for personalized healthcare, exercise monitoring, and pre-diagnostics. This paper reviews the recent progress in sweat biosensors and sensing systems integrated into textiles for wearable body status monitoring. The mechanisms of biosensors that are commonly adopted for biomarkers analysis are first introduced. The classification, fabrication methods, and applications of textile conductors in different configurations and dimensions are then summarized. Afterward, innovative strategies to achieve efficient sweat collection with textile-based sensing patches are presented, followed by an in-depth discussion on nanoengineering and system integration approaches for the enhancement of sensing performance. Finally, the challenges of textile-based sweat sensing devices associated with the device reusability, washability, stability, and fabrication reproducibility are discussed from the perspective of their practical applications in wearable healthcare.

The thermal sensitivity of phase-change memory (PCM) poses a stringent thermal budget for back-end encapsulation, demanding high-performance diffusion barriers processable at low temperatures. Conventional low-temperature silicon nitride (SiN_x) films, however, are typically porous and prone to oxidation due to abundant metastable Si–H/N–H bonds. Herein, we propose an in-situ plasma cycling strategy that reconstructs the bonding network of plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) SiN_x at a record-low temperature of 200 °C. Through controlled Ar/N₂ plasma exposure, we cleave metastable bonds and reorganize into a continuous Si–N network, achieving a near-theoretical density of 3.4 g/cm³ (a 61.9% increase) and a 143.8% enhancement in Si–N bonding proportion. The resulting 40-nm barrier effectively suppresses Te/O interdiffusion, reduces wet-etch rate by ~67%, and maintains thermal confinement within 1.6% deviation. Integrated into PCM devices, this barrier yields a 98.7% SET/RESET operation yield and a 1.4-fold wider resistance window. This work not only provides a reliable encapsulation solution for PCM but also establishes a generalizable plasma-mediated interfacial engineering approach for advanced electronic devices under thermal constraints.

Achieving high emission efficiency at low current densities remains a challenge for micro-LEDs. Here, we demonstrate a controllable interfacial strategy by tuning the annealing temperature of RF-superimposed DC sputtered ITO to modulate carrier injection dynamics. STEM analysis reveals 500 °C annealing triggers discrete substitutional In-atom incorporation into the p-GaN lattice, forming localized nanoscale contact regions. This architecture induces a localized carrier injection mechanism that significantly enhances the efficiency of micro-LEDs at low current densities. Specifically, the 500 °C-annealed 10 μm devices exhibit a dramatic enhancement in light output power (LOP), reaching 1.3 × 10⁻¹ mW at 5 A/cm², which is significantly higher than the 5.3 × 10⁻⁴ mW measured for 700 °C-annealed devices. Furthermore, the peak efficiency current density (J_peak) is dramatically shifted from 140 to 17 A/cm² for 5 μm devices. Capacitance-voltage analysis further corroborates the localized carrier injection mechanism. These findings establish contact interfacial modulation as a robust strategy for optimizing micro-LEDs in low-power display applications and tailoring device-level performance across broader optoelectronics.

Spin-orbit torque (SOT) is widely considered as the key technology for next-generation magnetic random-access memory (MRAM), leveraging ultrafast operating speed and unlimited endurance. However, integrating perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) SOT-MRAM stacks with the back-end-of-line (BEOL) thermal budget remains a critical challenge, as PMA degradation and Pt-Fe interdiffusion typically occur under 400 °C annealing. Here we propose a double CoFeB reference layer (DCFB) structure to address these issues. The additional CoFeB reference layer and two extra CoFeB/W interfaces significantly enhance the PMA of the reference layers, while improving the crystallization of the overlying Pt/Co multilayers. Furthermore, the DCFB stack effectively acts as a diffusion barrier against Pt-Fe interdiffusion. Consequently, a fabricated magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) incorporating the DCFB stack achieves a high tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) of 137% even after annealing at 400 °C. Our work provides a robust, simplified approach for the design of SOT-MRAM stacks with BEOL thermal budget tolerance.

Large-area perovskite solar cell modules efficiency remains lower than small-area devices, perovskite crystallization between small and large areas difference could be one reason. Previously, diluted solution was often used to reduce viscosity to achieve uniform perovskite thin films, but this approach could narrow the crystallization window and leave insufficient time for controlled crystal growth. Meanwhile, insufficient solute supply often results in interrupted material availability for grain growth, leading to the formation of excessive small crystal nuclei and thus poor thin-film quality. Here, we developed a strategy that use a bi-functional group additive to stabilize the δ-FAPbI₃ intermediate phase, which delays the direct and rapid conversion of lead iodide into α-FAPbI₃ during large-area perovskite film growth. Based on this strategy, the efficiencies of perovskite modules with aperture areas of 14.6, 70.5, and 285.6 cm² developed in this work are 24.4% (certified steady-state efficiency: 24.4%), 23.1%, and 22.4%, respectively. The efficiency loss per order-of-magnitude increase in area was reduced from 2.0% to 1.3%, which is approaching the state of the art of traditional thin-film CdTe solar cells (0.8%). In addition, the large-area module (155 cm²) retained 86% of its initial efficiency after 1053 h of maximum power point (MPP) tracking.

Digital to analog converters (DAC) play an important role as a bridge connecting the analog world and the digital world. With the rapid development of wireless communication, wideband digital radar, and other emerging technologies, better performing high-speed high-resolution DACs are required. In those applications, signal bandwidth and high-frequency linearity often limited by data converters are the bottleneck of the system. This article reviews the state-of-the-art technologies of high-speed and high-resolution DACs reported in recent years. Comparisons are made between different architectures, circuit implementations and calibration techniques along with the figure of merit (FoM) results.

In this paper, we analytically study the relationship between the coercive field, remnant polarization and the thickness of a ferroelectric material, required for the minimum subthreshold swing in a negative capacitance capacitor. The interdependence of the ferroelectric material properties shown in this study is defined by the capacitance matching conditions in the subthreshold region in an NC capacitor. In this paper, we propose an analytical model to find the optimal ferroelectric thickness and channel doping to achieve a minimum subthreshold swing, due to a particular ferroelectric material. Our results have been validated against the numerical and experimental results already available in the literature. Furthermore, we obtain the minimum possible subthreshold swing for different ferroelectric materials used in the gate stack of an NC-FET in the context of a manufacturable semiconductor technology. Our results are presented in the form of a table, which shows the calculated channel doping, ferroelectric thickness and minimum subthreshold for five different ferroelectric materials.

Robotic computing systems play an important role in enabling intelligent robotic tasks through intelligent algorithms and supporting hardware. In recent years, the evolution of robotic algorithms indicates a roadmap from traditional robotics to hierarchical and end-to-end models. This algorithmic advancement poses a critical challenge in achieving balanced system-wide performance. Therefore, algorithm-hardware co-design has emerged as the primary methodology, which analyzes algorithm behaviors on hardware to identify common computational properties. These properties can motivate algorithm optimization to reduce computational complexity and hardware innovation from architecture to circuit for high performance and high energy efficiency. We then reviewed recent works on robotic and embodied AI algorithms and computing hardware to demonstrate this algorithm-hardware co-design methodology. In the end, we discuss future research opportunities by answering two questions: (1) how to adapt the computing platforms to the rapid evolution of embodied AI algorithms, and (2) how to transform the potential of emerging hardware innovations into end-to-end inference improvements.