INTEL's latest microchip technology has created transistors 22 nanometres wide - a mere 200 times the width of a hydrogen molecule. Carving such tiny features is devilishly difficult and expensive, but in another realm of microchips altogether, something odd is happening: chips are being made on an outsized scale and then shrunk to the required size, avoiding much fiddly hassle. The shrinking innovation is happening in the field of the "lab-on-a-chip". Such chips are typically plastic slivers. (source: newscientist.com)
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