Hardware Today
CS 641 Lecture, Dr. Lawlor
IBM recently presented an interesting technology called the "through-silicon via (TSV)" for stacking silicon wafers in 3D. This is basically a multi-layer generalization of the now standard "flip chip" or Controlled Collapse Chip Connection (C4) solder bump scheme.
UAF's own Shiva and Nilina Hullavarad
published a bunch of work on the solid state physics of semiconductor
fabrication: vapor deposition, UV lasers, ion irradiation, etc.
Sadly, the UAF Office of Electronic Miniaturization was closed in the summer of 2010.
You can similarly etch circuit boards with a laser printer toner mask resist.
This is my current standard way to build circuit boards for robotics
and instrumentation work; other people mill away the copper.
Similar amazing technology happens inside a laser printer,
going from a raster scanned laser light pattern, to an electrostatic
pattern on the imaging drum, to a dusty stuck-on toner pattern on the
paper, to a clean heat-fused print. The generalization of this
etching technology to build 3D structures from silicon is used in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), such as the accelerometer in your laptop.