Spintronics Used To Create 3D Microchip

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Spintronics Used To Create 3D Microchip

Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 1, 2013 @04:33AM from the import-independence-from-flatland dept.

Zothecula writes "A major obstruction to the development of practical 3D microchips is moving data and logic signals from one layer of circuitry to another. This can be done with conventional circuitry, but is quite cumbersome and generates a good deal of heat inside the 3D circuit. Physicists at the University of Cambridge have now developed a spintronic shift register that allows information to be passed between different layers of a 3D microchip. 'To create the microchip, the researchers used an experimental technique called ‘sputtering’. They effectively made a club-sandwich on a silicon chip of cobalt, platinum and ruthenium atoms (abstract). The cobalt and platinum atoms store the digital information in a similar way to how a hard disk drive stores data. The ruthenium atoms act as messengers, communicating that information between neighbouring layers of cobalt and platinum. Each of the layers is only a few atoms thick. They then used a laser technique called MOKE to probe the data content of the different layers. As they switched a magnetic field on and off they saw in the MOKE signal the data climbing layer by layer from the bottom of the chip to the top.'"

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Sputtering is experimental? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-01 04:41 · Score: 3, Informative

Sputtering is experimental? News to me.
1. Re:Sputtering is experimental? by cellocgw · 2013-02-01 05:03 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Well, certainly, making aggrieved comments by sputtering about the OP is past the experimental stage.
  (disclaimer: I ran sputtering machines in 1974 and they sure as heck weren't new then)
  
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2. Re:Sputtering is experimental? by CanHasDIY · 2013-02-01 05:17 · Score: 2
  
  Sputtering is experimental? News to me.
  A statement pretty much everyone who ever owned a Chevy Corvair would be hard pressed to disagree with.
  
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3. Re:Sputtering is experimental? by plus_M · 2013-02-01 05:24 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Maybe by "experimental technique" they meant "a technique that is used in experiments", rather than "a technique that is still in experimental stages". That is how I read it. We often call things such as X-ray crystallography "experimental techniques".
4. Re:Sputtering is experimental? by Lithdren · 2013-02-01 05:38 · Score: 2
  
  I have no background on this kind of thing so i'm sure someone will come along here and happily correct me if i'm wrong, but the link you provide about Sputtering doesn't seem to have anything to do with what they're doing here.
  They're using Sputtering, but in a new way. I'd consider that experimental for most pratical purpuses. One can make a fire and demonstrate quite easily that boiling water produces steam. However when Heron played around with the idea and invented a (rather impratical but somewhat functional) steam engine, i'd say he was working with something experimental.
5. Re:Sputtering is experimental? by Reverand+Dave · 2013-02-01 08:16 · Score: 2
  
  Nope, sputtering has been a pretty standard part of the semiconductor process for at least 2 decades now...
  
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6. Re:Sputtering is experimental? by henryteighth · 2013-02-01 08:19 · Score: 2
  
  Maybe by "experimental technique" they meant "a technique that is used in experiments",
  Indeed. It is an "experimental technique" rather than a "theoretical technique" or a "computational technique", say. It's frustrating to read an abstract of a physics paper which sounds like the authors have performed a nifty measurement, only to find that in fact they are proposing an idea, or have performed a simulation, or theoretically analysed the problem. (Don't get me wrong, they're all equally important things, but not the same as performing an experiment). Thus, it's nice to emphasise one's "experimental technique".
7. Re:Sputtering is experimental? by OolimPhon · 2013-02-02 00:42 · Score: 2
  
  Get off my lawn! I was involved in a sputtering project, production not experimental, in 1968.
  It is a well-known industrial method for various kinds of non-obvious plating, such as aluminum on PVC. In the experience I referred to above, aluminum, platinum and/or gold were layered onto glass and silicon substrates.
  It is how the aluminum interconnect layer is deposited on silicon chips, after all.
tell that to Seymour Cray by swschrad · 2013-02-01 05:07 · Score: 4, Informative

the 1-X had several layers of chips stacked under the epoxy in the ALU section. had a guy in a class who worked in chippewa falls show me a naked chip, pretty cool.
the technique has been around a while, and chip on chip with one reaching over the divide to another stack has been around for quite a while, too. called "dead bug" assembly.
sputtering has been around since the planar transistor, and before that, in putting the active layer on vacuum tube cathodes.

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