PhysOrg.com reports from the AVS 57th International Symposium & Exhibition that researchers at Zyvex Labs in Richardson, Texas “have demonstrated a process that uses a scanning tunneling microscope tip to remove protective surface hydrogen atoms from silicon one at a time and then adds single atomic layers of silicon only to those meticulously cleared areas.” From “Coming soon: Manufacturing with every atom in its proper place“:
The long-held dream of creating atomically precise three-dimensional structures in a manufacturing environment is approaching reality, according to the top scientist at a company making tools aimed at that ambitious goal.
…To date, Zyvex Labs researchers have demonstrated removal of 50 hydrogen atoms per second. But with experience and innovation, Randall predicts large improvements in the speed of this limiting factor.
“There are many paths to scale-up, including parallelism,” he says. “A thousand-fold increase in speed will be fairly easy to achieve.”
Within seven years, Randall expects that Zyvex Labs will be selling initial production tools that can remove more than a million hydrogen atoms a second using 10 parallel tips at a cost of about $2,000 per cubic micrometer of added silicon (48 billion atoms).…
Thanks to Philippe Van Nedervelde, Foresight Executive Director, Europe.