Could this also be used for manufacturing lots of other microscopic things? layer by layer?
"Instead, their method finds errors up to 0.017 nm along side-to-side measures (x and y axes) and 0.134 nm when assessing the distance between the two chips (z-axis)."
Could you make some very very sensitive and tiny seismic sensors with this?
edit:
"
Arbabi also points out that this method can be used to make displacement sensors that can be used for measuring displacements and other quantities. "Many physical quantities that you want to detect can be translated to displacements, and the only thing you need is a simple laser and a camera," he says.
For instance, "if you want a pressure sensor, you could measure the movement of a membrane." Anything that involves movement—vibration, heat, acceleration—can in theory be tracked by this method.
I made a home-brew seismic sensor using something similar, a hard disk head arm assembly, a cd-rom laser (which has an anisotropic lens and four photodiodes) and a Red Pitaya used as PID, so I guess it can be done!
Maybe I'm missing something here, doesn't this simply move the precision problem to a different part of manufacturing? Previously you had to be precise with aligning the chips, now you have to be precise with how you put those alignment marks on the chips you want to align. Am I missing something here? Or is it considerably easier to put the marks on the chips with sufficient precision?
Putting marks on the chip with high precision is much easier; that's done by the same kind of lithographic process that's used for building up all the other layers of the chip, which is generally via exposing a photosensitive layer of material with light through a mask, and they already have ways of keeping those mask layers in alignment.
But aligning multiple chips together is a different process, and while it sounds like they previously had ways to do this via simple optical inspection of those alignment marks, that's less accurate than a holographic alignment using a laser.
Could this also be used for manufacturing lots of other microscopic things? layer by layer?
"Instead, their method finds errors up to 0.017 nm along side-to-side measures (x and y axes) and 0.134 nm when assessing the distance between the two chips (z-axis)."
Could you make some very very sensitive and tiny seismic sensors with this?
edit: " Arbabi also points out that this method can be used to make displacement sensors that can be used for measuring displacements and other quantities. "Many physical quantities that you want to detect can be translated to displacements, and the only thing you need is a simple laser and a camera," he says.
For instance, "if you want a pressure sensor, you could measure the movement of a membrane." Anything that involves movement—vibration, heat, acceleration—can in theory be tracked by this method.
"
I made a home-brew seismic sensor using something similar, a hard disk head arm assembly, a cd-rom laser (which has an anisotropic lens and four photodiodes) and a Red Pitaya used as PID, so I guess it can be done!
Maybe I'm missing something here, doesn't this simply move the precision problem to a different part of manufacturing? Previously you had to be precise with aligning the chips, now you have to be precise with how you put those alignment marks on the chips you want to align. Am I missing something here? Or is it considerably easier to put the marks on the chips with sufficient precision?
Putting marks on the chip with high precision is much easier; that's done by the same kind of lithographic process that's used for building up all the other layers of the chip, which is generally via exposing a photosensitive layer of material with light through a mask, and they already have ways of keeping those mask layers in alignment.
But aligning multiple chips together is a different process, and while it sounds like they previously had ways to do this via simple optical inspection of those alignment marks, that's less accurate than a holographic alignment using a laser.
I would think the alignment marks would be included in the photomasks, so they would be part of the chips themselves
The last bit about using this same technique for sensors is pretty cool. Ultra-sensitive microphones or touch sensors would be pretty awesome.