Nano soldering iron repairs computer circuits
Image by J. Charest
What can you do with a soldering iron that’s 100 times narrower than a human hair?
Plenty, according to Georgia Institute of Technology chemical engineer William King. For instance, a soldering iron only 50 atoms across at the tip makes it easier to repair the circuitry of expensive microchips used to power supercomputers. King created just such a device from a narrow piece of silicon.
William King: So basically you can do circuit repair at the nanometer scale. So you have a circuit, can inspect it with the tip when the tip is cold, you can find places where there’s some element that’s missing, you can zap it with the heat and deposit some metal, wiring things up. It’s really analogous to the macroscale soldering iron.
King talked about how using nano–sized soldering irons not only to repair but also manufacture microchips could have a positive environmental impact.
William King: A new manufacturing plant that a big semiconductor company might build costs on the order of billions of dollars and will take up square acres. Here we have manu tech that could be put into a box the size of a desktop computer. I can do basically the same type of nanometer scale manu with a much, much lower environmental footprint.
Our thanks today to the National Science Foundation. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
Our thanks to:
William P. King
Assistant Professor
College of Engineering
School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Tech
The tip looks bigger than 50 atoms across. Did you mean 50 nanometers?
If I’m not mistaken: The tip is not visible in the picture. The tip would be pointing into the page under the area where the two cantilevers come together. Even so, my guess is the end radius of the tip is around the 50nm that Dr. Chuck suggested. Sharp tips approach 5nm. However, the coating on the tip for the electrical connection will increase the end radius.