Chapter 29, Problem 1RQ

Over the latter half of the 20th century, what drove the manufacture of products with ever-decreasing dimensions?

To determine

The effect on manufacture of products with ever-decreasing dimensions.

Explanation of Solution

Over the latter half of the 20^th century, more emphasis was made to decrease the dimensions of the products. The drive towards miniaturization of the integrated circuit (IC) invented after solid state transistor to increase the performance of electronic device and decrease the cost.

Now a days, the feature sizes of IC chips ranging approximately four or more order of magnitude from $10\text{nm}$ scale gate length to $100\text{μm}$ scale solder bumps. Smaller gate sizes increase the speed; decrease the cost and permits higher component densities. The requirements of solder bumpsfor the interconnection within the electronic devices.

Nanotechnology involves the length scale of matter between $1$ to $100\text{nm}$ and micro technology involves the length scale of matter between $1\text{μm}$ to $1\text{mm}$ . Nanotechnology generally follows bottom-up approach of integration of nanocrystals whereas micro technology follows top-down approach of integration.