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Will Aerogel Let You Put a 24 GHz Computer On Your Desktop by 2006?

June 27, 1997: Hear what scientists are saying about Aerogel! (link to Japan's only 24 hour science and technology news channel - on the web! This link uses RealAudio, text is also printed.)

June 13, 1997: Last month's Scientific American described the future of the computing industry as perhaps relying on new chip material choices, such as aerogel (a sample is pictured at left), for maintaining the progress of a remarkable story in industrial growth - the growth of computing speed, sometimes called Moore's law, depends on radical choices in next stage manufacturing. Moore's law, named after the former CEO of Intel, states that the computing power of chip manufacturing doubles every 18 months. Since its formulation in the 1960's, 30 years of experience in the silicon wafer industry has relentlessly borne out this geometric doubling. No other industry in history has ever come close to matching that scale of progression. Over the next decade, this would translate the current state of the art (300 MHz) desktop PC into a whopping 24 GHz machine!

Computing Speed: Additions per Second
1971	1974	1979	1982	1985	1989	1993	1995	2006?
60,000
290,000
	330,000
		900,000
			5,500,000
				20,000,000
					100,000,000
						250,000,000
							24,000,000,000?

"Chip makers now seek a substitute for silicon dioxide, the reigning dielectric. Silicon dioxide's only sin is too high a dielectric constant -a measure of its ability to keep a signal in one wire from disrupting neighboring signals. Recognizing that air has the lowest dielectric constant of any substance, one company has taken a Swiss-cheese approach to fashioning dielectrics. Nanoglass, a joint venture between Allied Signal and a New Mexico startup called NanoPore, has crafted a silicon dioxide material with air-filled pores that can be as small as 10 nanometers in diameter. The material, which is similar to a class of substances known as aerogels, can achieve a dielectric constant only slightly above that of air itself. But manufacturers must still determine whether the porous material will withstand the stresses of the fabrication line. Time is running out to solve the host of remaining technical problems. Unless new approaches emerge, the history books may look back on Moore's law as an artifact of the electronic industry's adolescence."

Web Links Aerogel Web Site - More about aerogel research and news Aerogel and Space Science FAQ Microgravity Science News Archive More science headlines - NASA space science research

There are a couple of aspects of this problem for space experiments, both optimizing the material strength, the pore size and finally actual testing of the dielectric strength. The road map from there is to take lessons learned to improve the process for withstanding tough on-line handling in chip manufacturing.

Aerogel Specifications:

Apparent density: 0.003-0.35 g/cc
Internal surface area: 600-1000m²/g
% solids 0.13-15%
Mean pore diameters ~20 nm
Primary particle diameter 2-5 nm
index of refraction 1-1.05
Thermal tolerance to 500 C
Coefficient of thermal expansion 2-4x10^-6
Poisson ratio 0.2
Young's modulus 10⁶-10⁷ N/m²
tensile strength 16 kPa
Fracture toughness 0.8 kPa*m^0.5
Dielectric constant 1.1
Sound velocity through medium 100 m/s

Curator: Bryan Walls
NASA Official: John M. Horack