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Folding Nanosheets To Build Components
Nakeot writes "In the continuing efforts to build faster and smaller components, a group of researchers at MIT have constructed a basic prototype device that folds materials only hundreds of microns across. Mechanical engineer and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering George Barbastathis leads the charge into 'nano-origami' machines involving, the article reads, 'a new technique that allows engineers to fold nanoscale materials into simple 3-D structures' (more details available on MIT's page). The group had worked in 2005 with MIT Associate Professor Yang Shao-Horn to build a single-fold nano-capacitor (PDF, or see Google's HTML version), and this work appears to automate their 2005 process. A comment on the posted video appears to suggests this device is not completely automated yet, however. (This should not be confused with Paul Rothemund's slightly-more-ahead DNA-origami technology.)"
Apparently, yes. Paper can be, too. Cool.
That bit they are folding over is ~500 um (half a mm) - that's easily big enough to see with the human eye, and you could probably fold that over if you were careful with a pin or something. This certainly isn't yet small enough to integrate into IC's and stuff. (or at least if you did you would be limited to a few capacitors per IC). I can see it could possibly be useful for charge pumps on some chips, for example for flash memory erase voltages or LCD drive voltages. Allowing a few reasonably large value capacitors on the die of a chip could mean pins could be eliminated, which reduces cost. Currently many IC's have pins specially for capacitors which could be eliminated with this. It also reduces external circuitry, reducing total device costs.