Maskwriting facilities already obsolete?

It’s exciting when discoveries and innovations are coming fast and furious but it can be difficult to figure out exactly how to proceed. I just read about a new table-top technique for nanofabrication that doesn’t require ultra-violet light.  This stands in contrast to the proposed new maskwriting facility for nanofrabrication at Simon Fraser University (SFU). The processes described in the SFU release and in the article about the table-top technique  for lithographic patterning seem very similar except one uses ultra violet-light and the other does not.  At this pace it seems as if the SFU facility is likely to beocme obsolete soon. Still, it’s a long way from experiments in a laboratory to industrial use as planned at SFU and I don’t imagine that it makes much sense to wait for the new process. After all by the time that’s ready for  ‘prime time’ use, there’ll probably be another discovery.

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