Palo Alto, California - under the microscope, four wafers - electronic circuits known as mini-chip-performed a complex dynamic dance, as if it is controlled by a hidden puppet master . Next, they are accurately arranged in accordance with the instructions, each of which is located in the correct contact point.
This technology showing the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in Xerox is a part of a new electronic product manufacturing system. The system draws on the invention of Xerox in the 1970s: laser printer.
Once this technology is perfect, you can achieve a desktop manufacturing plant, for a variety of electronic devices "Print" circuit, including elastic smartphones, even if you are sitting above; there is a new machine hand Soft, sensitive skin; and medical bandages with intelligent induction functions, you can collect your health data, and you can discard it.
Today's chip is made of wafer (Wafer), with hundreds of grains (DIE) of the sized sized size on each wafer, each having the same circuit in each crystal grain. These wafers are cut into separate grains, and then they are re-combined on the printed circuit board, each board may contain tens or even hundreds of chips.
PARC researchers are ideas for a completely different model. With the funding of the National Science Foundation and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, they designed a machine similar to a laser printer that accurately will be tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands. A miniature chip is placed in an accurate position of a plane, and the size of each miniature chip does not exceed one sand.
These chips can be microprocessors or computer memory, and can also be other circuitry required to make a complete computer system. They can also be an analog devices for microelectromechanical systems, referred to as MEMS, for inductive temperature, pressure or motion.
In the envision of PARC researchers, this new manufacturing system can be used to make custom computers, only one manufacturing each time, can also be used as part of the 3D printing system to manufacture smart devices directly built into computer systems.
This is still a future technology. The researchers need many years to put tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of circuits in an accurate position than a second. They also admit that if you want to create a computer-friendly system, this is just the first step.
However, if PARC's researchers have successful, they will subvert the traditional wisdom of Silicon Valley for 50 years.
Production RF Identity (RFID) Equipment Silicon Valley Enterprise Alien Technology Alien Technology occupies the frontier status of the other similar but relatively simple technologies. This basic concept called fluid self-assembly is to let a small integrated circuit called "nano block" in the liquid, then flowing on a plane, the nano block will fall into his own. The shape is consistent in a small hole.
In the past 50 years, traditional thinking of computer production is in the chip of more transistors into the size of the fingers, so that the computer is faster and more powerful in the first two years. The two ideas described above have completely subverted this thinking.
This new printing technology puts forward a concept of deficiency: Why do you have to put as many transistors as possible into a small space, why not apply transistors to a larger plane?
In addition, this study may have an extremely huge impact on the economy - in the manufacturing industry opens a new digital age, comparable to the revolution set off in the publishing industry than 30 years ago.
This technique can replace the circuit board that needs the factory to assemble, which is now spread all over the world, and it is necessary to hire a thousands of workers' supply chains for substantial compression.
At the same time, it is also one of the many technologies related to 3D printing. The latter is the area of public is very concerned, and some people have begun to worry that everything can be manufactured at home in the future - from the tool to the gun.
In December last year, the Ministry of MIT (MIT) Bit and Atoms, the person in charge of the atoms, physics Neil Gershenfeld in "Foreign Affairs" magazine Written: "Digital manufacturing technology can design and manufacture physical items at any point according to personal needs."
In the prototype design, the 3D printing of solids and mechanical objects has begun to be applied in large-scale applications, and this technology is increasingly popular in small-scale production, and PARC scientists believe that there will eventually be a series of manufacturing technologies. The microelectronic device and mechanical components are seamlessly fused together.
"You can print mechanical objects, but now there are many things in the world," Stephen hoover "said" Stephen hoover "said" How to use low cost to embed your smart, you will be embedded in the world. " It is a big field in the 'Internet of Things'. "
The new manufacturing system for PARC thinks is more easy to customize. For example, as we can now use software to customize a computer, future computers can determine the shape of each computer according to the upcoming incoming system. Perhaps the computer is just a component in the future, it is one of the partial catalogs of the 3D printing system.
PARC electrical engineer Eugene week (Eugene Chow) led the team designed a new technique, which they call "dry electrostatic printing micro-assembly." Zhou said that this technology divides wafers into tens of thousands of micro chips, like "ink" in the bottle, then "print", and the X Shi laser printer leaves color powder on the paper.
With the computer assisted, the technology of PARC uses a series of electrodes that can generate microelectric fields to control the precise positioning of the micro circuit - not only in the correct position, but also in the correct direction.
"This is a crazy revolutionary new tool," Dr. Zhou said.
Article Source: NYTIMES
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