The Incredible Shrinking Chip

By michaels8692
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    The Incredible Shrinking Chip

  • Miniturization - Anderson

    John Anderson ,in an attempt to illustrate to his students how the "fire pumps" or "atmospheric machines" used in britaian worked, created a smaller version of the device which failed to work. The reason for failure , identified by James Watt, was that in the smaller version the atmospheric pressure was insufficient to overcome the friction between the piston and the chamber wall. Watt then substituted steam pressure for atmospheric, and the miniature worked fine. This led to the steam engine.

  • Miniaturization - Joule

    James Prescott Joulewas trying to devise a way to measure a minute temperature change in water in the exploration the equivalence between work and heat. To do this he had to create a more accurate thermometer. He made a very fine glass tube, but realizedthat the diameter was not constant. So he used an optical microscope to make calibration points in the tube. He coated the tube with beeswax and made his markings, He then submerged the tube in acid and the acid etched away the exposed glass.

  • Electron to Electronics - Geissler

    In pursuit of Franklin's research on lightning, Heinrich Geissler reproduced miniature lightning between two electrodes placed in a glass tube filled with gas.

  • Electron to Electronics - Crooke

    William Crooke perfected Geissler's tube for the study of miniature lightning without gas. This was knows as Crooke's Tube.

  • Electron to Electronics - Thomson

    Joseph John Thomson used a slightly modified version of Crooke's Tube to discover the electron. This began the age of electronics. Soon to follow were telephones, electromechanical relays, vacuum tubes, diodes, triodes, and pentodes.

  • Welcome to the Quantom World - Planck

    Max Planck developed "Planck's Constant" which is a universal constant that describes the quantum effect of energy exchange at the quantum level. He realized that exchanges are not constant, as they are in the macro world, but rather occur in leaps called "quanta".

  • Electron to Electronics - Transistor

    Bell South employees John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shocklyinvented a device based on a small semiconducting crystal in which the named the transistor. This device functioned like a triode, but did not need to be warmed up.

  • Thinking Machine

    Jon Von Neumann suggested that it would take 100,000 transistots to create a thinking machine. that number has been far surpassed, and still no thinking machine.

  • Electron to Electronics - Kilby

    Texas Instrument Engineer Jack Kilby solved the problem of transistor assembly by inventing the first "integrated circuit". This was accomplished by integrating several components and their wires on a single surface. Months later Robert Noyce improved it further by integrating all the compnents on a single silicon wafer, eliminating the need for connecting wires.

  • Fineman's Speech

    Richard Fineman give's his famous after dinner speech to the elite of American Physics beginning with "There's plenty of room at the bottom". A speech in futurolgy, he proposed the question, "What would happen if we could arrange atoms one by one the way we want them?".

  • Needle Upright on a Footbal Pitch - Mollenstedt

    Gottfried Mollenstedt created electron beam lithography by using an electron beam< one similar to those used in scanning electron microsopes, to score lines in resin. He produced his company's logo with lines only 100 nanometers thick.

  • Moore's Law

    Gordon Moore made the statement that the number of components per integrated circuit would double every year, which was later adjusted to the density doubling ever 2 years. This Became "Moore's Law".

  • Contageous Miniaturization - Muller

    While working on the optimization of manufacturing processes with silicon dioxide, Richard S. Muller adapted his knowledge of photolithography processes to manufactur a microwheel. This led to the developement of microelectromechanical systems knows as "MEMS". MEMS are used ion video cameras, projectors, injet printers, and more.

  • The Quantum World- Nanotubes

    Nano tubes are carbon tubes with a diameter ranging from a few nanometers to a few tens of nanometers. These have potential use as chanels for the next type of transistor. They are appealing because they are very strong, have high heat conductivity, and can act as conductors or semi-conductors.

  • Mesoscopic

    During exploration of the hall effect, physicist replaced the bar with a wafer only a few nanometers thick. This produced findings that displayed that at the quantum level is no longer linear, but in fact stepped. This is the quantum Hall effect.

  • Limits of Miniaturization

    Electic track on integraded circuits became so narrow that electron migration would cause the aluminum tracks to dissapear. This issue was solved by replacing aluminum with copper. This was a better conductor and more resistant to electron migration.