High school junior Ryna Karnik makes a truly incredible breakthrough that will speed the development of more powerful CPUs and other integrated circuits and reduce the cost and time of prototyping new chips. It sounds like something out of StarTrek but it is a real device. Using a small particle accelerator about 6'x3' in dimensions, the device can "burn" a chip 1 transistor at a time.
Ryna will probably become as rich as Bill Gates with her invention.
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"Ryna's technique is fabrication without masks and without photoresist," McCarthy said. "It allows deposition and etching from computer-stored patterns, which can be modified easily and quickly, compared to the week required to produce a new set of masks for a new chip design."
"Using photoresist to create transistors can be a 20- to 100-step process," Karnik added. "Using a focused beam of heavy gallium ions to etch the transistors directly takes six to seven steps."
Transistors connect to their circuits in three different places: a gate, a source and a drain. When Karnik tested the individually etched transistors with a three-point probe, she showed that "transistor wiring to the source, the drain and the gate were not shorted and doped regions were activated," McCarthy said. "The transistor operated as expected."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=75&ncid=75&e=7&u=/nf/20030226/tc_nf/20853
Ryna will probably become as rich as Bill Gates with her invention.
_____________________________________________________
"Ryna's technique is fabrication without masks and without photoresist," McCarthy said. "It allows deposition and etching from computer-stored patterns, which can be modified easily and quickly, compared to the week required to produce a new set of masks for a new chip design."
"Using photoresist to create transistors can be a 20- to 100-step process," Karnik added. "Using a focused beam of heavy gallium ions to etch the transistors directly takes six to seven steps."
Transistors connect to their circuits in three different places: a gate, a source and a drain. When Karnik tested the individually etched transistors with a three-point probe, she showed that "transistor wiring to the source, the drain and the gate were not shorted and doped regions were activated," McCarthy said. "The transistor operated as expected."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=75&ncid=75&e=7&u=/nf/20030226/tc_nf/20853
