Chapter 141
12/21/2006
Ch 141 Nano Technology horse chips to microchips
I took this photo today as I pass by the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at SUNY Albany every day on my route to downtown. The excavator is like a horse grazing on pastureland that makes way for the new development. I like to shoot first and answer questions later because photography is forbidden here. The Security guards eyed me over but didn't stop me as I was on the public right of way. A new member of my hockey team, Mike Ward, works in this beautiful structure for the silicone valley based Applied Materials. Mike is a fine all around player but chooses not to chug beers with the gang, and as a professional (process engineer) probably goes back home to work on the 350 or so process steps it takes to develop chips for the next generation architecture. They are looking at applications at 32 nanometers and extending it to 25 nm. A human hair is about 80,000 nm wide. You see, nano technology, for the few of you who may not know, is all about teensy tiny thingies, transistors & circuits. We are Tech Valley here in Albany. We've built the world's first "nano-mall" known as Albany NanoTech (ANT), the most advanced R&D complex of any university in the world which includes thousands of scientist from all over the world. AMD is projected to throw in a few billion dollars into a 300 mm silicon wafer fabrication facility a few miles from home in Malta to compete with Intel's domination. I wouldn't mind getting into nano, but only in a small way. Maybe do a little Atomic Layer Deposition or some doping. Couldn't be more difficult than tuning a Mikuni Carb with a screwdriver.
As the largest semiconductor equipment solutions provider, Applied Materials makes the systems that are used to produce virtually every new microchip in the world. Everybody that's anybody collaborates here in Albany. Raytheon, IBM, AMD, SEMATECH, Tokyo Electron, on and on.
Flash memory applications will benefit. No, we're not talking about Mom's, "Now where did I put my pocketbook?." We're talking about improving my brand new iPod Nano that uses the obsolete Toshiba 2 gigabyte memory chip. I want my whole record collection in an ear plug, maybe combined with the hearing aid I'll need shortly. Electronics Rule!