A more cost-effective method of manufacturing microchips will gradually replace multi-billion-dollar foundries with table-top boxes, marking the end of the silicon era and the potential death of many factory-floor jobs, a nanotechnology expert predicted Wednesday.
Advances in 3D manufacturing
using nanotechnology are already taking place, Douglas Mulhall, author of Our Molecular Future, told an Ottawa audience during a morning presentation entitled "How Nanotechnology is Transforming Ottawa’s IT Horizon."
"We now see hundreds of companies around the world manufacturing products by printing them three dimensionally. It looks like this technology will become as common as bubble-jet printing technology is now."
Bubble-jet printing occurs at billionths of a metre -- every page has literally tens of millions of ink drops on it, said Mulhall. When the same concept is applied to the manufacturing process using nanotechnology as a catalyst, it "allows us to accurately translate CAD drawings, for example, into something (tangible) . . . that actually functions."
