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.

AIST has elucidated that only several times of use of an insecticide causes accumulation of insecticide-degrading bacteria, which belong to the genus Burkholderia, in the soil, and insecticide resistance can develop rapidly in the pest Riptortus pedestris, when the pest acquires the insecticide-degrading bacteria from the soil. The results of this research demonstrated that insecticide resistance could develop rapidly in just several weeks. The same tendency was observed in the field environment.

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.

An organic-inorganic hybrid mesoporous material with stable and hydrophilic surfaces was synthesized by controlling the reactivity through partial substitution of the four ester groups in 1,4-benzenephosphonate ester with low-reactive hydroxyl groups. The introduction of benzene rings enabled the addition of amino groups and sulfonate groups. In addition, it was possible to create diverse mesoporous materials with hydrophilic surfaces that can be modified through substitution of aluminum with titanium and vanadium.

AIST has greatly improved the sensitivity and inspection area of a thin film transistor (TFT) array inspection technology (a gate modulation imaging technology) by combining an image processing unit that can run at a speed of about 1 gigabyte per second, a CMOS camera with about 4.15 megapixels, high-brightness LED lights, and wide view-field optics. This shortened inspection time to within 3 minutes and expanded the area to 3 cm square. AIST also made it possible to inspect storage capacitors.

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.