Virginia Tech chemists are using a new technique to observe chip manufacture at the molecular level. D.C. Aug. 20-24. Faculty member Timothy Long explains that the researchers are using in-situ infrared spectroscopy during the manufacture of the materials, rather than doing the spectroscopy afterwards. If you are making a computer chip that has components that approach 0.1 microns, you have to have a well-defined molecule. Co-authors are chemistry graduate students Anthony J. Pasquale and Robert Karro, Robert D. Allen of the IBM Almaden Research Center, which is sponsoring the research.
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