| ▲ | kragen 2 hours ago | |
Mechanical applications at that scale are not well developed, but that doesn't mean their potential is small. Member sizes below the critical diameter for flaw-sensitivity are crucial to the hardness and durability of, for example, human teeth and limpet teeth, as well as the resilience of bone and jade. Nearly all metals, glasses, and ceramics are limited to a tiny percentage of their theoretical mechanical performance by flaw-sensitivity. Laparoscopes that require smaller incisions are better laparoscopes. Ideally you could thread in a biopsy-needle instrument through a large vein to almost anywhere in the body. Visible-light optical metamaterials such as negative-index lenses require submicron feature sizes. I know a research group that is gluing battery-powered RFID transponders to honeybees. Electrophoretic e-paper displays are orders of magnitude more power-hungry than hypothetical MEMS flip-dot displays. We just don't have an economical way to make those. And of course MEMS gyroscopes, accelerometers, and DLP chips are already mass-market products. There's still a lot of room at the bottom, even if EUV takes thetakes purely computational opportunities off the table. | ||
| ▲ | BlaDeKke 2 hours ago | parent [-] | |
I can’t wait for MEMS flip-dot displays. | ||