Where there is no resist, acids etch away silicon dioxide in the next step.
More layers of silicon dioxide and other materials are grown on the etched layer.
The wafer is then heated and the oxygen reacts with the silicon around it, making silicon dioxide (ie, glass).
Intel's new insulator replaces silicon dioxide with a metallic alloy called hafnium.
Some studies have linked the inhalation of titanium dioxide and silicon dioxide dust to cancer in animals, but it has not been proven in humans.
Aerogels can be made out of many different substances, including silicon dioxide (also called silica), carbon and even egg albumen, though silica aerogels are among the most common.
Comprising of seven tiny layers, each 50 to 100 nanometers in height, the coating is made of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods positioned at an oblique angle.
In 1931 American chemical engineer Samuel Kistler invented the lightest known solid--an aerogel--by drying a form of silicon dioxide (a raw material for glass) under intense pressure and high temperature.
Glasslike silicon dioxide has been the insulator of choice in electronic chips since 1959, when Bob Noyce cobbled together the first silicon integrated circuit--wires and switches etched into silicon insulation.
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara plan to break that silence with genetically engineered proteins that can make silicon dioxide or titanium dioxide structures like those used in the computer chips and solar cells that we hold dear.
Starting with two silicon wafers, Soitec machines coat the surface of one with silicon dioxide insulator and embed inside it a thin fault line of hydrogen atoms anywhere from 100 to 20, 000 nanometers below the surface, depending on customers' desired wafer thickness.
The system the researchers tested used a type of solar cell known as dye-sensitized solar cells, a lightweight and inexpensive type where the active layer is composed of titanium dioxide, rather than the silicon used in conventional solar cells.
The dye molecules themselves are bound to tiny particles of titanium dioxide, a less-famous (but cheaper) semiconductor than silicon, and the whole assembly is immersed in an electrolyte and sandwiched between two electrodes.
ECONOMIST: A new type of cell may bring ��solar�� energy indoors
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