The system "prints" circuits by etching the circuit on a wafer and then placing the film over the traces.
Modern manufacturing of printed wiring boards (PWBs) involves extensive use of various hazardous chemicals in different manufacturing steps such as board preparation, circuit design transfer, etching and plating processes.
The advance is part of a quest for electronic circuits that are perhaps one-thousandth the size of today's transistors, which are made lithographically by etching circuits on silicon with light.
The fact is that technological progress is uneven, for reasons that need have nothing to do with policy: sometimes you strike a rich technological vein that can be mined for decades, like etching circuits using photolithography, sometimes you don't.
By solving those problems, they are extending the life of optical equipment and postponing the day when chip factories have to switch from light to X rays in etching circuits onto silicon.
It was a new challenge for the former Harvard electrical engineering professor, who had built a successful company around a new way of etching microchip circuits that are narrower than the wavelength of light.
The most complex part of the build was etching the printed circuit boards that spotted when a body part or the tongs touched the live edges of the hole it was in, said Mr Lang.
There are perks to pay for: locker space, small offices, the "Maker Shed" where members can buy supplies, and classes on such topics as food etching, soldering and circuit board design.
The research is considered crucial to continuing advances in the semiconductor industry beyond 2004, when current technology is expected to reach its limits in etching ever-smaller circuits on silicon.
