Word: copper
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...thin sheet of metal and etched away everything they didn't want. What was left were microscopic paths of metal just wide enough to carry a current. But while chipmakers had developed any number of ways to etch aluminum, no one had yet figured out how to etch copper. Doing that, IBM suspected, would require inventing a whole new kind of chemistry. Doing that became something of a Holy Grail within the industry, says Drew Peck, a semiconductor analyst at Cowen...
...discovered a Houdini-like trick for stuffing twice the quantity of digital information in the same physical space on a chip. Then last week IBM unveiled what may be an even more significant advance: its researchers had found a way to replace the aluminum conductors in their microprocessors with copper, which is cheaper and faster. Says IBM vice president John Kelly, who has been experimenting with copper chips since the 1980s: "This...
...only because copper is relatively cheap. The real breakthrough is that copper conductors will make it simpler to build much smaller chips. This is a big relief to chipmakers, who were, as the pessimists suspected, having a tough time pushing electrons through smaller and smaller aluminum conduits, which become less conductive as they shrink. IBM had been working patiently on the problem since scientists realized a decade ago that to move to the next level of miniaturization (to wiring .25 microns wide, about 400 times thinner than a human hair), they would need to abandon aluminum...
...Copper was an obvious replacement, but it had a couple of problems that seemed insurmountable. The first emerged when scientists tried to lay copper onto silicon. The tiny copper atoms filtered into the porous silicon like hot coffee dripping though a percolator. Copper is so conductive that just one hyperkinetic atom could "poison" the entire silicon surface...
...exterior of the houses, building services will work to stop water penetration, which can damage slate roofs, chimneys, gutters and copper joints. Much of the stonework on House facades is being remortered and sanded, and workers will repair the wrought iron gates and fences along the river...