Sunday, January 20, 2013

New Technique is the key to Cheaper Electronics

Electronics gadgets have been the new trend in everyone’s daily life. Go and check out your friends/colleagues houses. You’ll at least find more than ten or more electronics gadgets in every corner of the house.
However, some of the electronic gadgets, such as the computers, are still expensive, due to the components that being used to build it.
In order to overcome the downfall, a group of scientists from the University of Minnesota had created nano-scale structures on silicon templates. It can be used repeatedly!
smoothest-surface
Basically, it’s the latest technique, which is a five-minute epoxy that can be easily found at a local hardware store.
The scientists began the experiment with a single block of silicon. After that, they placed a mask over the block and treated the exposed area with potassium hydroxide. The potassium hydroxide is used to etch various structures into the silicon chemically. As a result, the process creates a pattern in the silicon and serves as a template!
Furthermore, the smart team has discovered the way to reuse the templates. They’ll peel the metal off and revealed the ultra-smooth patterned surface underneath, instead of destroying the silicon! Or, the silicon can be saved by adding more metal on it!
The research team believed that the new technique would be able to create cheaper electronics in the near future. [discovery]

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