AIST has developed a high-reliability 1200-V-class SiC transistor with a unique structure. The developed transistor has trench type gates and SBD built on a trench sidewall. The cell pitch, i.e., the spacing of the gates, was reduced to 5 µm, less than one third of the conventional pitch. Thus, the voltage applied to the PiN diodes was reduced and a high-reliability transistor that does not suffer from current degradation was developed. Its performance was verified using a mass-production-quality prototype.

HIV reverse transcriptase (RT) is fairly stable and the structure of its active site resembles that of hepatitis B virus RT. AIST generated a modified HIV RT that binds to entecavir (ETV), a nucleoside analog drug for hepatitis B treatment, and analyzed its three-dimensional structure. It was found that hydrophobic interactions of ETV are critical for its entry and binding to the active site of the modified RT and that ETV bonds stably due to a hydrophobic interaction with the bottom of the active site.

AIST evaluated decadal changes in arterial stiffness of 92 volunteers by a follow-up study. It also investigated the volunteers’ specific gene polymorphisms and physical activity levels. A specific combination of the gene polymorphisms was associated with 2.4 times greater decadal increase in arterial stiffness. The decadal increase in arterial stiffness in the high-physical activity group was less than half of that in the other groups. The results are potentially useful for developing a gene marker to identify the risk of cardiovascular disease.

By utilizing the characteristic of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) that absorbs near-infrared light, AIST has developed a technique to measure the amount change of CNT inside of macrophage cells over time. After super-growth single-walled CNTs (SG-CNTs) were administered and internalized into macrophage cells, the cells were lysed and the amount of SG-CNTs in the lysate was measured. The results showed that the intracellular amount of SG-CNTs decreased over time and that SG-CNT is biodegradable.

AIST has developed a readout technology for superconducting detectors. The developed technology that can load a signal of 1,000 pixels or more on a single readout wire, which is 5 times larger than a conventional technology. The developed technology consists of multiple room temperature signal processors operating in parallel, and converts information from all pixels at the cryogenic stage into different frequency bands for each room temperature processor, loading these all together on one readout wire.

Thought experiments in combination with analogue models have elucidated the cause of the east-west contraction and crustal deformation of the Japanese islands in the Quaternary Period. It was concluded that the cause of the east-west contraction is not movement of the Pacific Plate itself, as conventionally thought, but rather movement of the Philippine Sea Plate.

AIST has developed a high-power flexible thermoelectric module. The developed thermoelectric material is a transition metal-doped bismuth-tellurium alloy. Thermoelectric chips were produced from an ingot of the material and a flexible thermoelectric module was built by mounting the chips at high density on a flexible substrate. The developed module allows to be adhered to heat sources with curved surfaces and can be used for a variety of power generation applications using waste heat.