Rayko Ivanov Stantchev and his team have found
a way to look inside computer chips. With terahertz radiation, they are able to
look through materials that are otherwise opaque.
Light, but not quite
Terahertz
radiation is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. This spectrum also contains
radio waves, ultraviolet rays and also visible light. All types of radiation
are sorted by wavelength on the spectrum. Terahertz’s wavelength comes right
between microwaves and infrared, making its wavelength slightly longer than
that of light. This is excellent for looking through materials, because the
longer the wave, the bigger the objects the wave can ‘see through’. That’s why
your computer has no problem with seeing the WI-FI (that are in fact radio
waves), that comes from your router, but you can’t see the router, if you’re
not sitting next to it. Radio waves have a way longer wavelength, and thus they
can ‘bend’ around your furniture, stairs and cat. While the visible light, that
your eyes see, has a shorter wavelength and can’t bend around your cat. But in
the ability of waves to bend around things also lays the problem. You don’t
want the waves to bend around the thing that you actually want to see.
Terahertz waves have just the right wavelength
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| The electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz radiation comes between microwaves and infrared |
Looking straight through
With terahertz
radiation, we can look through computer chips, while still being able to see
the structures inside it. To be able to look inside the chip, Rayko
Ivanov Stantchev and his team beamed patterns of radiation onto a slice of
silicon, the material most computer chips are made out of, that was only a
hundredth of a centimetre thick. Because of this pattern, the silicon become
transparent for the terahertz radiation. But the structures inside the chip
don’t become transparent, enabling the scientists to see them. With this
technique, they were able to find malfunctioning parts in the chip as small as
eight micrometres across. That’s about half as thick as the finest human hair.
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| Image made with terahertz radiation, you can clearly see the structure |
Computers and biology
The
researchers consider using terahertz radiation a technique with much potential.
For now, the possibility to see through silicon is limited by the thickness of
the material, and the material can’t be really thick yet. Scientist predict
that with improving the techniques, much thicker materials could be used. This
can be really helpful with checking computer chips for malfunctioning parts,
since the chips can just be ‘scanned’. But terahertz radiation has another
interesting use. It could also be used in biology to scan tissues, because
water, which is abundant in all living organisms, absorbs the terahertz
radiation, making it easy to detect were there’s a lot of water. Because the
radiation doesn’t bounce off of those spots. All in all a very promising
technique that will benefit both computer sciences and biology.
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