home Links: NanoTechnology Employers: The companies I've worked for and the skills I have. SMIC - What it's like to work out there? A warning China: my thoughts on the state of technological affairs. The chip business SIL missionary, why Christianity is still western imperialism. Yet amidst the cultural destruction, there is message of hope. 30 years West, 30 years east. - Living on the other side of the ocean, to create balance. An engineer trapped in a Missionary's body. Industry Trends - My take on where the industy is going Industry links contact me at: justin (@) deepdrift dot com Comments GyozaQuest is a non profitable site,	NanoTechnology The official definition of Nanotechnology, is technologies which involve processes or substances which are below 100 nanometers in size. Thus if a cosmetics company has an additive which has particles in that range, they can claim that their face cream uses nanotechnology to make you skin softer, smoother, and younger looking. It can be used to place particles in composite materials that gives them unique properties, stronger, more flexible, more durable, or even heat resistant. However as someone who's worked in the semiconductor industry and seen the steady progress, to smaller and smaller line pitches, and the steady improvement in or tool, Nanotechnology is no big deal. It's a lot of political hype. Companies will go to nanotechnology, however it's not going to be the type of thing which can be encouraged specifically. Perhaps a stem cell biotech initiative would be more focused. Nanotechnology, is simply a natural extension of the technologies already availible. Thus if a location has the infrastructure to support technology companies, nanotechnology companies will naturally follow. How it affects me We have a tool which measures Nanotopography. exacly what that is, still eludes me sometimes. You used to be able to google Nanotopography into google and a page on this site would come up. I think it's changed now. But for people who take measurements of wafer quality this is a general idea of what range we're talking about. Surface Flatness (2mm square points) 10 e-3 meters. Nanotopography (microns to hundreds of microns) - looking for defects simply on the surface probably 10 e-4 meters SQM - Surface quality measurement - an overall measurement - measuring roughness, and topography. 10 e -6 meters Haze - 10-100 nanometers - 10 e-8 meters - This is the actual atomic scale roughness of the wafer. Or in our case it's the natural background noise when trying to measure particles, by looking at the photons backscattered from an incident beam.