With many electronic devices in the world today, it is very easy to take their development and numerous applications for granted. Think of the calculator, an easily obtainable portable computing device that might cost you as little as dollar. Yet, the technology inside it is no more than 50 years old and revolutionary in its application.
The manipulation of electricity in order to produce certain results such as powering a cell phone, computer, or any other electronic device has its origins with the vacuum tube. This particular technology involves the amplification or modification of an electrical signal via the manipulation of electron movement within a lower pressure space. Early applications involved the light bulb and radio signal transmission.
Since then the Integrated Circuit board, or IC, was developed, replacing the vacuum tube with solid state devices for the conduction of electrical signals, such as the transistor and diode. Not only is the IC much cheaper to manufacture, but it is also much more energy efficient, smaller, and lasts longer. The further miniaturization and efficiency of the IC has only continued to develop over the years.
Microchips, or integrated circuit boards, have only gotten smaller, more powerful, and more efficient. A recent development by a group of Taiwanese scientists involves a new microchip, one much smaller than the world has seen to date. This particular device is said to measure only nine nanometers in length. One nanometer is the equivalent of one billionth of a meter.
Though not available for commercial application yet, this microchip technology (one square centimeter in size) would have the memory capacity to store over 100 hours of movies. Imagine that! We have certainly come a very long way since the first IC board was introduced in the late 1950s. What could the next 50 years possibly have in store for microchip technology?