A new manufacturing technique could overcome the technological limitations currently facing the microelectronics and data-storage industries, and pave the way for smaller electronic devices and higher-capacity hard drives.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies have developed a technology that combines lithography techniques traditionally used to print, or pattern, microelectronic circuits with self-assembling materials called block copolymers. These consist of two or more chemically different polymer segments, or blocks, connected by a junction point.