A supercharged metal-ion generator

In the electronics industry, thin metal films are deposited on silicon wafers with a sputter gun, which uses energetic ions - atoms with a positive charge - to knock the metal atoms off a target. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have now developed a powerful new kind of sputter process that can deposit high-quality metal films in complex, three-dimensional nanoscale patterns at a rate that by one important measure is orders of magnitude greater than typical systems...

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