Tiny chip, huge concept: On a project last year, Intel manufactured the first Silicon Photonics Link. Copper circuit-board traces degrade signals, but this tiny chip's optical fibers cleanly transfer more data over longer distances. Its transmitter has four lasers; their light beams travel into an optical modulator that encodes data onto them. Then the beams are combined and sent to one fiber for a data rate of 50 Gbps. At the other link end, a receiver reseparates the beams and directs them into photodetectors, which covert data back into electrical signals.

Miniscule chips require immense precision

Moore's Law states that computing power on integrated circuits (ICs) grows exponentially — doubling every two years. First observed in 1965, this increase of transistor sensing, memory, and processing capabilities continues unabated. So how do chip engineers consistently cram more functionality onto increasingly tiny chips?

One essential ingredient is motion designs capable of executing the nanoscale tasks required for new chip manufacture.

Most recently, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., developed a way to manufacture 20-mm, 8-GB NAND flash devices measuring 118 mm² - the smallest available. Notice how two 34-mm, 32-Gb flash die compare.

Conventional mechanical positioners are insufficient, because chip-production mechanisms and motion controls must provide precision 10 to 1,000 times higher than feature size — so error and vibrations must be kept to less than 0.1 nm.

In contrast, piezo-based designs are appropriate: These ceramic solid-state devices convert electrical energy directly into linear motion, so gone are the wear, play, friction, and backlash of rotary-to-linear mechanical elements such as gears and leadscrews. Consider one example pictured above — the N-310 NEXACT PiezoWalk linear drive from Physik Instrumente, Auburn, Mass. The 25 × 25 × 12 mm unit delivers travel to 125 mm and push (or pull) force to 10 N.

However, semiconductor manufacturing and wafer-inspection applications benefit most dramatically from the unit's resolution, so typical for a piezo device: Depending on the drive electronics, open-loop resolution reaches 0.03 nm.

SEMICON West 2011

SEMICON West 2011 will be held July 11 to 14 at the Moscone Center, San Francisco. This annual event showcases new technologies for microelectronics design and manufacturing, including design automation, device fabrication, and manufacturing — including assembly, packaging, and testing. Other topics include micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), photovoltaics (PV), flexible electronics and displays, nano-electronics, and LEDs. For more information, visit semiconwest.org.