Posts Tagged ‘electron beam lithography’
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October 30th, 2009
Enabling the next generation of high speed data networks
I was fascinated by this paper which recently appeared in Nanotechnology. My knowledge about the specifics of the field is limited, but the concept really grabs the imagination.
To understand the basics requires some of that (long-forgotten in my case) physics know-how you may have gleaned many years ago at school. Transfer of data via electromagnetic waves plays a part in practically every area of life nowadays and at its heart lies a key physical principle – communication between the transmitter and receiver of a data-containing wave reaches highest efficiency when the total length of the dipole antennas corresponds to about half of the wavelength of the electromagnetic wave. So, what is happening when you flick your radio on in the morning? Radio waves occupy the long wavelength, low frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. FM radio waves have a wavelength in the region of 1m – 10m, so a bit of tinkering around with the long metal aeriel sticking out of the radio usually lets you find your favourite station. It’s often not a perfect reception, but the ‘data’ you are receiving is pretty minimal it doesn’t matter too much.
So, what happens when you start wanting more data, and quicker? Obviously the frequency of the wave has to go up, which means the wavelength begins to decrease. Now we start to hit difficulties. Remember if you want to receive this data efficiently, your antenna needs to be roughly half the wavelength… To put this in perspective, the wavelength of visible light is 400 – 700 nm, meaning your antenna needs to be no longer than 350 nm in length if you are receiving data from such a source. Ouch.This paper describes a method of reproducibly constructing such minute antenae from gold using an electron beam process called electron beam lithography. As I mentioned above my knowledge of the subject begins to waiver when you get into the fine details, but the authors believe this may be a significant breakthrough to aid the next generation of high-speed data networks.
Trevor Keel
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