Small-scale Etching

*Really* small scale: [gadgets.boingboing.net]

Oh, think of the possibilities!!!

When you have a kid, you can etch a near invisible barcode into their tooth or something and then you'll always know that they are yours.

Or the ultimate tattoos for teens. They tatto their hair, and if they don't like it, it just grows out.

---

Jay

Hey, if you could find a way to massively etch hair on the small scale, you can set up structures to selectively reflect certain wavelengths of light using destructive interference. Sorta like morphos butterfly scales.

Not to mention the possibility of using it to etch chips, like the semiconductor industry already does(except they use masks instead of a controlled ion beam).

Only problem is that it's an ion beam, which means you have to do it in a vacuum.

First thing I thought of when I saw it was this: [blog.reprap.org]

I'd say achieving a vacuum would be a reasonable requirement if it allowed you to fab/mill IC's that were comparable to commercial product, if slower and possibly more costly to manufacture individually.

Are you suggesting a microscopic reprap?

Are you suggesting a microscopic reprap?

No. Victor has already done so. I'm thinking more of a component system. I fantasize about a reprap able to fab electronic appliances from scratch.

Well, if your gonna have a vacuum, why not do electron beam melting. It's like laser sintering, but with electrons. [www.engineershandbook.com]

If you can do electron beam melting, it might be possible to have a lot less moving parts. It might even be possible to highly focus the electron beam to etch chips.
[en.wikipedia.org]
In fact, electron microscope can easily be converted into electron beam lithography machines with a simple attachment. Simple STMs can be built quite cheaply, and might offer the possibility of microchip etching, if extensively modified. [www.geocities.com]

Of course, etching is only one part of making microchips. You have to get high purity silicon with just the right crystal structure. Here's a short primer of all the steps they have to go through: [www.intel.com]

... instead of converting expensive electron microscopes you can try to adopt an old tv or video-moitor.

Here you already have the electron-beam-focussing and -directing, so you only have to rearrange the controlling, cut away the front-screen and rearrange an air-tight housing with a sealing and a vacuum-pump ...

Viktor

i dont think tv-s positioning system is meant to work on such small scale the positioning accuracy nor beam focusing is that small

Hi r2kordmaa,

... the possible positioning- and focussing-accuracy is as good as the single colour-pixels in your mask - e.g. 0,3 to 0,1 mm with the normal highspeed-scanning.

When you remember the tubes in old-style oszilloscopes, then you can see, what's possible with moving the focus only.

With a bit optimizing and highres controllers it shouldn't be a problem to achieve accuracies of 5 to 10 microns with a focus of 30 to 50 microns or even smaller in diameter ...

Viktor

Well, with electron optics(think lenses for electrons), you could get much higher resolution. Possibly in the nanometer range(1000-100 at best)

[www.microscopy.ethz.ch]

Looking at the wikipedia article on electron lithography the two biggest problems are getting rid of the electrons if the material is not conductive and electrons scattering into areas you do want and reducing the resolution.

Well then, only do conductive materials.