Self-Growing Material Opens Chip, Storage Advances 30
coondoggie brings us this NetworkWorld article, which begins:
"In the ever-growing desire to produce smaller, less costly, yet more powerful and faster computers and storage devices, researchers today said they are looking at a way to
use self-growing fabrics that will let manufacturers build nano-sized high resolution semiconductors and arrays to answer that craving. Researchers at the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) at the University of Wisconsin — Madison have come up with a method that uses existing technology to combine the lithography techniques traditionally used to pattern microelectronics with novel self-assembling materials known as block copolymers, researchers said. When combined with a lithographically patterned surface, the block copolymers' long molecular chains spontaneously assemble into the designated arrangements."
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
Horrible, horrible freedom!
Grey goo (Score:1, Redundant)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Self-assemble, not self-growing, so it's not like grey goo at all. The headline is a lie, in soviet russia head lines you, imagine a beowolf cluster of welcoming nano-overlords, yada yada.
Re: (Score:1)
The headline is a lie
Right... by "this," I meant the /. article, not the source. :/
No edit button though.
No grey goo (Score:5, Informative)
cool new solid state storage (Score:4, Funny)
wishful thinking...
Re:cool new solid state storage (Score:4, Funny)
It only increases in size if you store porn on it.
Even then, after a while, porn or not, it goes back to its original size.
Re: (Score:1)
You do not "answer" a "craving" you feed it.
...with Brawndo. It's got what chip plants crave!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's got electrolytes!
Version 2 (Score:1)
The editor apparently didn't approve to original article, "Some scientists have an idea, although nothing has been demonstrated in a lab"
TGDaily cross-reference (Score:2)
Other uses? (Score:2)
How about 'self-growing' clothes, homes, cars, etc? Why limit this just to nano tech?
Re: (Score:2)
Because they don't want something catastrophic to happen, like if someone develops self-growing humans.
Re: (Score:2)
No problem at all! All that is necessary is to tattoo your entire body with an electrically conductive substrate then run a current through it while immersing you in toxic polymers, and Presto! You are wearing your new self-growing clothes.
...and you are a very interesting-looking corpse.
Gratuitous... (Score:1)
Some additional information... (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone with access, these two article's from today's issue of Science Magazine describe this research:
Block copolymers are polymers (long-chain molecules that make up, for example, plastics) that are designed in such a way that they spontaneously form well-defined nano-patterns when allowed to equilibrate. So for instance a block-copolymer cast as a coating might spontaneously form nano-sized cylinders inside it (where the 'cylinder' and 'matrix' are formed of two different components... the two 'blocks'). Depending on what kind of copolymer you synthesize, you can form nano-cylinders, nano-sheets, nano-spheres, and other shapes (check out this [ibm.com], and this [nyu.edu] for some examples of the morphologies one can obtain).
One of the problems with block-copolymers, however, is that although they form very well-defined shapes (of exceedingly small and regular size), that's useless if you can't put those nano-objects where you need them. That's where this new work in "Templated Self-Assembly" comes into play. Basically you create a conventional, big pattern using the tried-and-tested techniques used to make microchips (optical lithography, e-beam lithography, etc.). Then you use that as a template for the block-copolymer. It fills in the gaps in the big pattern with its much smaller-scale nano-objects... which are now placed at well-defined positions because of the larger-scale template. So basically you get "density multiplication" of whatever pattern you're able to make.
So if you can use normal lithography to make a pattern of 100 nm, the block-copolymer can fill in the gaps and give you a pattern with sizes of 20 nm. Also, this "self-assembly" process has a way of "healing" over defects, basically giving you a very well-defined pattern even if your original template wasn't perfect.
The patterns in question can be "chemical templates" (basically stripes of different chemicals on a surface), or "topographical templates" (physical channels), which is what the two above-mentioned papers deal with, respectively. (Other kinds of directed-assembly [nist.gov], like surface treatments, electric fields, or thermal fields, are also possible.)
The research is coming along very nicely, and Hitachi seems pretty serious about it. There's no guarantee that this will end up in real technology someday, but I'd say this is looking more and more viable as the research pours in.
(Disclosure: My research covers similar topics, and I've worked with some of the above-mentioned people on occasion.)
There was a movie about this (Score:2)
I think it was titled "The Blob."