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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 | ||||||||
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100,000,000 |
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250,000,000 |
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24,000,000,000? |
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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. |
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*m0.5
Dielectric constant 1.1
Sound velocity through medium 100 m/s
Curator: Bryan Walls
NASA Official: John M. Horack