Researchers of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have made detailed 3-D images of a commercially available computer chip. This marks the first time a non-destructive method has visualized the paths of a chip’s internal wiring (just 45 nanometres\u201445 millionths of a millimetre\u2014wide) and its 34-nanometre-high transistors clearly without distortions or deformations. It is a major challenge for manufacturers to determine if, in the end, the structure of their chips conforms to the specifications. Thus these results represent one important application of an X-ray tomography method that the PSI researchers have been developing for several years. In their experiment, the researchers examined a small piece that they had cut out of the chip beforehand. This sample remained undamaged throughout the measurement. The goal now is to extend the method in such a way that it can be used to examine complete chips. The researchers conducted the experiments at the Swiss Light Source SLS of the Paul Scherrer Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Researchers of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have made detailed 3-D images of a commercially available computer chip. This marks the first time a non-destructive method has visualized the paths of a chip’s internal wiring (just 45 nanometres—45 millionths of a millimetre—wide) and its 34-nanometre-high transistors clearly without distortions or deformations. It is a major challenge for manufacturers to determine if, in the end, the structure of their chips conforms to the specifications. Thus these results represent one important application of an X-ray tomography method that the PSI researchers have been developing for several years. In their experiment, the researchers examined a small piece that they had cut out of the chip beforehand. This sample remained undamaged throughout the measurement. The goal now is to extend the method in such a way that it can be used to examine complete chips. The researchers conducted the experiments at the Swiss Light Source SLS of the Paul Scherrer Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287862,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287861\/revisions\/287862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}