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Sandia Builds Micromechanical 'Device Driver' 159

Posted by michael from the working-on-the-chain-gang dept.
DanielRavenNest writes: "Sandia Labs has built a tiny bicycle chain type drive out of silicon. This allows one micromechanical motor to drive multiple devices scattered about a chip."
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Sandia Builds Micromechanical 'Device Driver' More

Sandia Builds Micromechanical 'Device Driver'

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  • How are these made? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PoiBoy ( 525770 ) <brian@poihol d i ngs.com> on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @09:01PM (#2846305) Homepage
    Other than that this stuff is made out of silicon, I don't know much about these devices. Are they etched like integrated circuits? And here's what baffles me...If they're etched, how in the heck can they actually make gears and stuff spin and move around?
    • Hmm.. honestly I dont know, but two ideas pop into mind:

      3D Printed

      or

      Etched.

      Man... I can't wait to see what happens when they start making microscopic machines. Anybody remember the plastic that has tiny capsules in it that break open when the plastic is broken, releasing a substance that restores some of the strenght? Wouldn't it be cool to use that type of plastic to act as a form of structural support while microscopic machines go in and fix the broken plastic on a real tiny level?

      Healing cars!!
    • It's actually pretty simple, you simply use lithography to create the pattern you want to etch, then by alternating etching and growing SiO2 you can pretty much create anything you want out of silicon. The real trick is in reducing the resolution to a few microns across.

    • Re:How are these made? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @09:27PM (#2846405)
      It is actualy quite easy, the gears that you see in the pictures are made out of poly silicon. So what you do it grow a thick (several micron) sacrificial oxide, pattern the oxide using standard lithography. Etch out the pattern of the gears, creating essentaly a mold of the gear. Then you backfill the area with poly silicon. You then preform a oxide etch with a HF acid solution and remove the oxide, leaving just the poly silicon gears. You grow the oxide, etch, fill, and repeat. This process is done several times to created diffrent levels. So as an example, the bottom of the chain would be layer 1. The Drive gear and the vertical post that connect the top and bottom of the chain are layer 2. Then the top of the chain is layer 3.
    • They can be actuated with a bunch of different methods. The easiest is a comb drive [google.com]. I'll let you read up on it. As for how they are made: Most gear-like structures are built with "surface micromachining" ie: building up on silicon with SiO2, polysilicon, metal, various epoxies like SU-8 etc. There is, however, another way to build many structures too, it is bulk micromachining. In bulk micromachining, the device is built on a single crystal silicon, that is, by etching into the silicon and having the body of your machine be the silicon you started with (and of course the other various materials I said before). For all of you who wonder how bulk micromachining works, I suggest you check out Berkeley's "Single Crystal Reactive Etching and Metallization" (SCREAM) process.

      ---

  • flap, flap, flap (Score:5, Funny)

    by BrianGa ( 536442 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @09:02PM (#2846312)
    Can I stick a baseball card on it, and hear the racket? All the neighborhood geeks will be so jealous...Hey, this Mickey Mantle isn't worth anything, is it?

  • Damn (Score:1, Funny)

    by jdc180 ( 125863 )
    Slashdotted in 4 minutes... those .gov servers blow ;)
  • Not every task will be suited to a solid state solution. Some will require mechanistic activity or (another alternative to solid state) biological activity. In the case of things like nanites that are going to navigate throughout the body and do stuff, this kind of thing could be useful (or a springboard to something useful).

    But my first thought was "once they have the chain, then they can build the nano-cycle... but where will they find all those itsy-bitsy Clowns? And how many can dance on the head of a pin?"

    All right, I probably do need therapy :)

  • Here's Google's mirror [google.com], since it looks like this site was /.'ed.

  • Before you get too excited... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Thagg ( 9904 ) <thadbeier@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @09:06PM (#2846334) Journal
    The application that Sandia has given, at least in the past, for their micromachine efforts is better locks for nuclear warheads. So, the analogy that the article makes to sewing machine factories only makes sense if they were nuclear sewing machines.

    thad

  • Article on MEMS research (Score:4, Informative)

    by Stone Rhino ( 532581 ) <mparke@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @09:06PM (#2846338) Homepage Journal
    here [nytimes.com] (free regblah.)
    AND for cut and pasters: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/10/technology/circu its/10NEXT.html

  • finally (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gavitron_zero ( 544106 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @09:14PM (#2846365)
    this is great news for the little computer elves that do all the calculations in my computer. They've been slaving away on their abicii for years, now i can buy them bicycles with nano-chains and stuff!
  • This is just cool. One can think of all kinds of applications for this. Even dumb ones. I do agree it could have uses in military technology as well.

    Could they use this to build motors in the top of chips and come up with some sort of package that allows the nano (and hopefully silent) fans to cool a CPU? Just a thought.
    • yes, one can imagine a far more sinister version of the teflon coated cop killer bullets. I suspect this technology will find military adoption all to soon once it's more readibly available..
    • Well a nano-sized fan is gonna move nano-sized amounts of air... I can't imagine that "fans" on this scale will do anything noticable. You could probably do something with liquid cooling of some sort, tho... keep a constant stream of mineral oil or something moving over the surface of the CPU and a heatsink.
  • I'm not terribly well informed on how these things work on chips currently. How much smaller will chips really become if you were to put several shafts to such a chain? And just how reliable would would of these chains be when hooked to multiple shafts? A friend of mine told me once that the chains weren't currently put on multiple shafts because they wouldn't handle the stress, so is this smaller chain really going to make chips smaller?

    Disclaimer. I could be completely wrong on everything here. I am ignorant of circuitry.
    • A lot of the fatigue and wear problems we see on macroscopic devices are not problems with the bulk material, but problems with faults, inclusions, grain boundaries, and things like that. Every time you turn a real bike chain, the teeth will scrape off a few atoms, a dislocation may move by a small amount, a fatigue crack may get one atom deeper.

      These little gadgets are so small that it is possible to make them out of a single, faultless piece of material. Okay, if you had a dislocation or an inclusion in your bike chain, then it would fail pretty quickly, if it worked at all; but if you get a good one, then it will seem almost immortal when compared to macroscopic objects. So, you make a few spares, and throw away the duds.

      We are used to seeing silicon and silicon dioxide as crystalline. However, if you take out the small features that allow a crack to propagate through a crystal, then these materials can seem very tough and flexible. Think of glass fibres and glass. The Sandia site used to have a downloadable video of a minature moving mirror getting trodden on by a flea: it bends but does not crumple, and springs back unharmed.

      There are other changes as you get to submicron sizes. Surface tension and other chemical effects seem huge. Water drops seem to have a tough skin on them at this scale, and drops will sit on a surface rather than wet it. This is just as well: a water drop could glue the chain together if it could wet. As things are, these gadgets seem to survive in the open atmosphere just fine.

      If you think that is weird, the nanoscale stuff is much weirder. Interesting times, or what?

      • As things are, these gadgets seem to survive in the open atmosphere just fine.

        My question is: do they also work in vacuum ? I ask because mechanical parts in vacuum have always the problem that they stick to each other (esp. metals) because there is no lubricating water film on their surfaces.
    • I don't know about chain-driven micromachines, but there's lots of instances where chains drive multiple shafts in macromachinery. Timing chains in engines for example, where the crank shaft drives perhaps two or three driven shafts through a chain.

      In the case of diesel engines with a mechanical injection pump, the torque load on the pump drive is very high and "pulsed" at the top of each compression stroke (tightest just before the injector opens). The chain will also be driving the camshaft (possibly two), maybe an oil pump drive, and occasionally you see the airbrake compressor driven off the chain.

      I should point out that the timing chains on big diesel engines like this are really horrible to tension correctly.
  • "The 50-link silicon microchain is designed to transmit power somewhat like the drive belt in a 19th-century sewing factory. There, a central engine shaft powered by steam turned drive belts to power distant work stations -- for example, sewing machines -- before the dawn of the age of electricity."

    Great, now we can look forward to the nanobots getting maimed and mangled in miniature industrial accidents. Let's hope the bots don't "organize" too well and go on strike because of this.

  • like what? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by MediumWare ( 527525 )
    Many people are talking about lots of uses for this thing, but nothing yet struck me as in: "yeah, if it can do this, it will really make a difference"... any examples?
    • Their may not be many uses for 'this little thing' but maybe they can implement the technology that they used to build 'this little thing' for other more important 'little thing[s]'.

      Who knows?

    • Re:like what? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Drake42 ( 4074 )
      Microscopic device that you eat. It swims around in you like a submarine, communicates by tiny radio waves, can even take grainy, tech looking pictures to show doctors whats going on in side you.

      Tiny little bot with one of those chem detectors. Attach it to a tiny bit of iron. It floats around in a solution and when it finds a molecule of the type you're looking for it grabs ahold. Now you can seperate two things that were presumably not seperable before.

      Tiny machine that traces around circuits that have gone defective and actually repairs them through some magic. The little devices follow the paths until they come to a problem they can repair.

      My personal goal device actually has nothing to do with chains, but is a microscopic audio recorder that becomes permanently attached to your ear. It records everything you hear giving you perfect memory! Powered by body heat so you don't switch batteries, no bulky tapes, saves the data to disk at the end of the day. Suddenly my bad memory is no longer a handicap!

  • Possible Use... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alfredw ( 318652 ) <<alf> <at> <freealf.com>> on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @09:38PM (#2846441) Homepage
    Consider hooking this thing up to a Brownian Ratchet, such as discribed by Feynman in his lectures. (For those not familiar with a Brownian Ratchet, this page [chaos.gwdg.de] give a good introduction and a cool Java thingy to play with. See also R.D. Astumian: Thermodynamics and Kinetics of a Brownian Motor, Science 276, p. 917-922 (1997). Essentially, it works like a very small, normal ratchet. Molecules in the atmosphere hit the system randomly. Sometimes it goes "forward," but it cannot go against the ratcheting mechanism - "backwards" is locked out. So you get a net forward motion on the ratchet essentially for free from the atmosphere.)

    Connect the Brownian Ratchet to this little chain thingy. Have it wind something up. User presses button, and thingy unwinds. Basically a free recharging system.

    Not all that practical, but pretty cool. I'm sure there are better applications... (anyone?)

    • Re:Possible Use... (Score:2, Informative)

      by wsherman ( 154283 )
      This particular chain is probably too big to see much brownian motion. Something like the ion channels that control the movement of ions across cell membranes might be more the right size.

      If one could design an ion channel that allowed ions to diffuse in one and only one direction one would have a battery that never needed charging. Of course, if that were possible evolution would probably have done it already. On the other hand, as I understand it, Boltzmann's H-Theorem only applies to dilute gasses so it remains to be proved that such a thing is impossible.

      Maybe the reason that humans are smarter than animals is that the neural ion channels in human brains have evolved to overcome the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It would be interesting to know if anyone has ever looked at whether ion channels obey the Second Law.

      • ... it is powered by the sun. So fuck the damn creationists, doomsday get my gun" (to borrow a phrase from MC Hawking).

        There is nothing mystical about the physical infrastructure of human intelligence. We derive our energy from the food we eat (in a very ineffecient manner), much of which in turn (at some point) derives its energy from photosynthesis, which in turn derives its energy from the sun, an energy source external to the earth (and one which will, some day, run out).

        We are powered by the sun, in other words, not some mystical force violating Thermodynamic's second law. Our intelligence may have other implications, but a mystical violation of the basic laws of physics isn't one of them.
        • What about geothermal and nuclear? Geothermal is basically potential energy from the initial formation of the solar system and nuclear comes from the destruction of other stars and/or the raw energy of hydrogren.
    • The Brownian ratchets don't work... in the July 2001 issue they explained why it doesn't break the second law of thermodynamics :)


      There is exactly enough heat (random motion of molecules) that hits the central pivot that knocks it out of it ratchet and back a space that it cancels out the motion. Sorry, no free energy.

      -Cruz

      • I don't see how it'd be "free" energy in the technical sense, cause it's not. It's just "free" for all intents and purposes. Has one of these dohickeys actually been made and tested, and they KNOW that theres "exactly enough heat (random motion of molecules) that hits the central pivot", or is it just more conjecture?
    • Consider hooking this thing up to a Brownian Ratchet, such as discribed by Feynman in his lectures

      The Brownian Ratchet you describe won't work, because of the second law of thermodynamics. The second law is potent enough that even evoking Feynman's name won't make it go away. Besides, what Feynman described was why this won't work.

      See Chapter 46 of the Lectures if you want the details, but in short, it would quickly get hot enough that its own shaking (heat=random motion remember?) would drown out the Brownian motion.

      -- MarkusQ

      • The Brownian Ratchet you describe won't work, because of the second law of thermodynamics.

        Not really. Energy is taken from the motion of the atmosphere. It is free in economic, not physical, terms, and is therefor not a violation of the 2nd law.

        In other words, it is not a closed system he is describing, but an open system where energy is introduced (from the molecular motion of the atmosphere, which in turn is powered by the sun).

        Furthermore, heating issues can be handled in the way they are handled in any electrical or mechanical system (in this case decoupling the ratchet, using active cooling, or whatever). Besides, chances are something like this is being used to charge a more mundane battery (converting mechanical energy to electical, which involves loss of energy, then converting the stored energy back to electricity, which involves another loss, and so on).

        All well within the laws of thermodynamics. Innovative, and "free" in the sense that atmospheric motion, powered by the cost-free energy of the sun, is free. Not at all free in terms of thermodynamics or entropy, as energy is being introduced from outside and then simply stored in some fashion, at a net loss in terms of total energy ... something we do with batteries all the time.
        • In other words, it is not a closed system he is describing, but an open system where energy is introduced (from the molecular motion of the atmosphere, which in turn is powered by the sun).

          Furthermore, heating issues can be handled in the way they are handled in any electrical or mechanical system (in this case decoupling the ratchet, using active cooling, or whatever).

          And how to you propose to power this "active cooling" system? If it and your ratchet are both 100% efficient you can break even; otherwise, you'll be operating at a net loss.

          Before anyone else (the poster to whom I'm responding seems to understand this point) suggests passive cooling, that won't work either; your device is surrounded on all sides by the heat bath, otherwise you wouldn't be seeing the Brownian motion, remember?

          -- MarkusQ

          • And how to you propose to power this "active cooling" system? If it and your ratchet are both 100% efficient you can break even; otherwise, you'll be operating at a net loss.

            Of course, they won't be 100% effecient (2nd law), so it would be a net loss to use active cooling. However, if your system is overheating, then using some of that stored energy to actively cool the components down to an acceptable level may be a reasonable option. Decoupling the ratchet before it reaches such a state would IMHO probably be preferable, though (ie. stop introducing energy into an overheating system).

            Such a system can probably be made to work and yield useful results (energy storage and dispensation as required), but you are correct in saying you do not get something for nothing. What we would be doing is tapping into energy which is currently "wasted" (the motion of our atmosphere as it is heated by the sun and cooled by the planet's shadow) and storing it for later use. As with any storage system, there would be operating limits on how much energy can be stored, what its tolerances for waste heat, etc. would be, and so on.

  • Finally... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'll be able to add a bike in a tightrope number to my flea circus.
  • ...is tiny little circus dogs to ride the bicycles and we're set.

    (Sorry. Couldn't resist).

  • Coming soon (Score:3, Funny)

    by SaturnTim ( 445813 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @09:50PM (#2846480) Homepage

    The Ultra-micro-featherweight class of robot wars! (Or battlebots, or robotica, or whatever)

    --T

  • What we need is movies (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    OK, that's amazing to see, but who else here thinks what we need is a MOVIE of it running. That would be SOO COOL.
  • This looks a whole lot like devices from the Planiverse...makes sense, since they are essentially dealing multiple two-dimensional layers. If you haven't read "The Planiverse", I suggest you do so...fascinating book.
  • Size of a human hair.

    Can it prevent me to going bald?

    Every tech should have a very practical use, you know...
  • Is it just me, or should they work on rectifying the oval gear problem [sandia.gov] next?
    • The gear is actually a circle but the viewing angle makes it appear to be an oval.
      • Don't you guys really mean elliptical? I know, I know, it's not the way to make friends. Here's a thought, though: two elliptical gears can be meshed to act like a pair of round gears, as long as the major axis of each gear is perpendicular to the other's. The only downsides I can see (aside from being needlessly complex) is that there is probably added friction, and the gears would need extra space around them to avoid collisions with other objects. Might there be a use for such a thing on this small a scale?

  • Now, a teeeny tiny WD-40 can (Score:4, Funny)

    by simetra ( 155655 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @10:27PM (#2846583) Homepage Journal
    will be necessary to keep it from gunking up.
  • Micro-Lego Mindstorms

  • Cool! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Pinball Wizard ( 161942 )
    Although this kind of stuff is not exactly new [sandia.gov], it's still damn interesting.

    My mom is an engineer at SNL, and I try to go once a year when they have their open house for families. The place is packed with stuff just as cool as this - supercomputers, particle colliders, nanotech, rockets and sattelites, I could go on and on. Really an amazing place - reading about it doesn't compare to seeing it in person. I highly recommend visiting if you get the chance.

  • Damn. That is really neat. Good job sandia, keep it up.

    God this stuff sometimes feels, well... unreal heh.

    Neat.
  • since way back I've always wanted to work on the latest and greatest. So I took a Mech Engineering degree, then they said computers were the greatest so, I just finished my CS degree and they said the hot thing was Biotech, so four years later I have my 'Bio-Informatics' degree then they said Nanotech so four more years and it's now Mechanical engineering.. hey
  • This reminds me of the last time I went to have dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Toronto. Their lounge has about six old ceiling fans, all driven by the same motor, connected by chains.

    We all know what happened to that technology.

    This might prove to be a good stepping-stone, but I think the end result will be a motor on everything that moves.

  • New computer fans! (Score:3, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @10:57PM (#2846652) Homepage Journal
    Now instead of one big honkin noisy fan, we can have the same noisy motor drive zillions of lil itty bitty fans (imagine if every little vent hole in your computer had a fan in it wheeeeee). Or maybe a huge wall full of these, would be safer to stick your finger into that then a big cut-your-finger-off fan.
    • About the "better to stick your finger into" part. Better, until it shaves away your finger like a microscopic pencil sharpener, or you crush the whole thing instantly. Oh yeah, and since no one seems to have said it yet, *dun dun dunnnn* imagine a beo... aww never mind.
  • Computer, knit me a jersey, bit two perl one :-) How do you oil the chain? If the chain breaks do you bend a valve?

  • Forget the chains... (Score:3, Funny)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2002 @11:25PM (#2846723) Homepage
    Just look at those gears. Man, with technology like that we can finally reduce Babbage's Analytical Engine to something that'll fit on a chip.

    Now that's a microcomputer!
  • this better not be like the chain on my big ball factory. *turn* *turn* *snap*....damn. maybe i should take the 10000rpm electric drill off and use the dinky motor it comes with.
  • Does the Pentium 4 use these, or something else?

    Tom
  • This is going to use one tiny chainbreaker :P
  • I clicked on their "Download 300 dpi image" link, and it gave me a 533 pixel wide picture of the "microchain" drive. That means that gear must be over an inch and a half wide!
  • Soon we will be building micro steamengines.
    That will take us risht into the micro industrial revolution which in turn will lead to the micro computer ;)
  • Does this mean we can now expect to see a Babbage Engine in the same form factor as a pocket calculator?

  • Oil? (Score:1)

    by tif ( 207976 )
    Do these things wear out? I'm guessing that oil would not have the desired effect.
    --tif
  • you can see the nano-hamster running in the wheel to turn this contraption.
  • You can see the Campagnolo [campagnolo.com] Micro-Record markings.
    Each bearing hand polished by buxom Italian babes.

  • I think there was a SCI FI book called the Difference engine, where "Clackers" used steam powered mechanical computers to run programs on punch cards. Now all we need is a really tiny keypunch machine. I can see it now... PKPA Personal Key Punch Assistant. Does this also mean CPU will mean Card Punch Unit?
  • "Device drivers?" I hope their not for .VXD's or anything evil like that. With bicycles, those little MS drivers could escape my Windows partition three times as fast.
  • Coming next: Nano-smokestacks and nano-steel furnaces.

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