Cheap Metal-Insulator-Metal (MiM) Diode Created 137
An anonymous reader writes "Progress on metal-insulator-metal diode manufacturing was just reported online in the professional journal Advanced Materials (abstract). For the first time a high-performance 'metal-insulator-metal' diode was created with cheap materials. This is a fundamental discovery. It could change the way manufacturers produce electronic products at high speed, on a huge scale, and at a very low cost, even less than with conventional methods."
Re:Ugh... yet another paywall stopping innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone wants information to be free... Until they come up with an idea of their own and publish it.
Re:Ugh... yet another paywall stopping innovation (Score:3, Insightful)
Information wants to be free. People want to control it and hide it and charge for it. But, if I told you a secret, you naturally want to share it. If I write a book, and people read it, that information is now theirs too, ie "free".
Of course people want free information. But, some people keep it in chains and lock it up and prevent it from becoming "public" knowledge, for their own personal gain. It's a war that has been waged for ever and will continue to rage...
Re:Ugh... yet another paywall stopping innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Just about every scientist who's employed in a university wants to give away their published articles for free to anyone with even a tiny interest. The only ones who like paywalls are publishers.
Re:Dooooood !! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's a car without retro.
Re:Ground breaking (Score:5, Insightful)
Silicon is not something we're going to run out of in the foreseeable future. If we do, it would probably be right after we ran out of nitrogen.
Re:Ground breaking (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ground breaking (Score:5, Insightful)
The insulator is generally treated silicon, e.g. silicon nitride.
Also, metals are something you find pockets of in the Earth's crust. The majority ended up in the core by virtue of its greater density. Silicon, on the other hand, is a key ingredient in the crust itself, and tends to be present in the minerals which you would have to find, extract, and process to get the metals involved in circuit-on-silicon fabrication.
Also, the amount of material in the silicon wafer itself is far, far more than the entirety of all surface features comprising the integrated circuit.
If anything, you would want to be comparing the relative scarcity or value of the metals involved versus the dopants involved, the relative ease of fabrication, and the particulars of what you can fabricate like minimum feature size, chip area per circuit element, and compatibility with other things you want to do on your wafer.
Re:Fundamental discovery? (Score:1, Insightful)
Your comment, while factually correct, is unhelpful.
So is this one.
Re:Ground breaking (Score:2, Insightful)
So much for the fast pace of new tech. ;)
Re:Dooooood !! (Score:3, Insightful)
...or Light Emitting Resistors?
You mean light bulbs?