MEMS is at the Nano level and has been for years. I was the cognizant
Licensing professional for 5 years for the UC Berkeley Sensor and Actuator
Center and have some knowledge of the advances in the area. However as far
as RP goes, there is nothing presently commercially available that is able to
lay down circuitry on a nanoscale. However there has been a lot of
development at SRI International and other institutions for using printing
technology for deposition of circuitry onto flexible and nonflexible
substrates. In deed there is much that has already been done to lay down
gold, copper, and platinum for the purpose of printing batteries and active
and passive circuits. That technology has been licensing to Avery Denison
for printing of RFID tags for passive antitheft devices. SRI was also
developing methodology for printing larger hybrid batteries for automotive
use. The same type of equipment that was developed for its RP and printable
circuits technology was to be used for this purpose.
The IBM technology is far, far advanced, but it remains to be seen how
quickly the technology can be introduced. Since it is post silicon
technology, new manufacturing processes will have to be developed before it
can be introduced in to a chip of any kind. New facilities for new
processes, BiCMOS, cost about a billion dollars; not a small sum. However
since I am familiar with all the steps that the process may require (the
fewer, the better), it may actually be less expensive once the mass
production process is perfected.
Scott Taper
VP, Business Development
ParaMorph Systems Corp. (an SRI/Phase 2 Automation venture)
Mobile: 650-444-2572
E-mail: penquakr74@aol.com
http://hometown.aol.com/penquakr74/myhomepage/business.html
Principal
Technology Commercialization Consulting
Business: 650-444-2572
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://rapid.lpt.fi/rp-ml/
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