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This story is from the category Computing Power
Date posted: 05/03/2010 A new take on a centuries-old printing technique could shrink silicon chips and lead to advances in ultra-high-density computer storage. Computer chips are made by a process called photolithography, in which intricate patterns are etched into silicon wafers at the nanoscale to mark the areas where the insulators, metal tracks and substrates that form the chips are to go. But as the size of electronic components shrinks, this technique is approaching its useful limit: it becomes too costly and difficult to go smaller. Now Paul Nealey's team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison thinks a new variation on the original lithographic technique could be the answer. In Germany, late in the 18th century, Alois Senefelder devised a printing system in which a master image was created in oily ink on a block of limestone ? whence the term "lithography", after the Greek for "stone writing". Using a combination of the oily inks and watery fixing solutions, which naturally repel each other, Senefelder could create a printing plate on which ink lines were sharply defined, making it possible to reproduce multiple exact copies. Nealey's team's new technique ? dubbed molecular transfer printing (MTP) ? also involves the transfer of ink from a master to a replica, and they have shown that it can be used to duplicate one costly master silicon chip 20 times. See the full Story via external site: www.newscientist.com Most recent stories in this category (Computing Power): 17/05/2013: Data storage: Synchronized at the write time |
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