Microelectronics - Ever smaller, ever faster

What are the dimensions of microelectronics? Against the backdrop of a picture of a 4-Mbit chip magnified 500 times, visitors are led from the dimensions of daily life to the structures of microelectronics. Microelectronics makes use of a special form of material - a single crystal or monocrystal. The atoms of a single crystal are located at fixed positions of a regular lattice.

 

Material in crystalline form also occurs in nature. Rock crystal grows to a length of about a metre under constant conditions in the course of thousands of years. Synthetic monocrystalline silicon rods are manufactured in sizes of up to 30 cm in diameter and 200 cm in length. Cut into thin slices called wafers, they form the substrate on which microelectronic elements are implemented and interconnected. Structural widths of 1/10,000 mm were achievable in 1996. These enable digital memories holding four million bits of information in an area of 20 square millimetres to be manufactured.

The width of a conductor in a chip (approx. 1 nm) covers 3,000 atoms, and the capacitor charge of a memory cell consists of approx. 30,000 electrons. There are therefore currently no physical boundaries impeding further miniaturization. It is remarkable how regular development actually is. Every 18 months, the number of transistors in a certain area doubles. This rule, put forward by the microelectronics pioneer Gordon Moore, has held true for over 20 years. Accordingly, we can expect chips with a memory capacity of four billion bits by the year 2005. At present, 1,000 chips are still needed to store this volume of information electronically.

 

The chronology of electronics and microelectronics development is shown in the exhibition by four milestones, sculptures which guide visitors through the time aspect of the exhibition. Vacuum tubes, transistors, integrated circuits and the almost simultaneous Intel developments of the 4004 microprocessor and the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) 1103 illustrate the changes in basic technology that have taken place in this century.

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