Apr 5th 2011, 9:18 by The Economist online
SILICON is a good material from which to make computer chips. Appropriately doped, it is an excellent semiconductor and its raw material, sand, is hardly in short supply. But even though sand is cheap, the purified silicon needed for chips is expensive to make—as, indeed, are the chips themselves. A modern microprocessor requires a billion-dollar plant called a fab to etch onto its surface the tiny electronic components that make it run. On top of all that, silicon chips are hard and rigid, restricting their application in things like flexible display screens. For all these reasons, then, engineers have long dreamed of building chips out of something cheaper and more bendy—plastic, say. (See our video for new methods of bending silicon itself.)Continue reading.......
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