CD_61469.JPG A device used by electrical engineering Professor Stephen Chou to develop a technique for manufacturing the tiniest of electrical circuits and other nanostructures is featured in a new exhibit in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. 

The museum is displaying the original press Chou used for nanoimprint lithography, a method he invented to simplify the production of computer microchips and a broad range of other nanoproducts by creating molds that can emboss intricate patterns onto silicon chips.

The production method is based on a set of Chou’s inventions that allows the printing concept originated by ancient Chinese centuries ago to be applied to nanoscale. It is featured as part of a nanotechnology exhibit in the museum’s Centre for New Technologies, an interactive center for cutting-edge science and technology topics which opened on November 19.

Chou attended the opening of the new center, at which Dr. Horst Köhler, the president of the Federal Republic of Germany, delivered the opening address. Deutsches is the world’s largest museum of technology and science, attracting nearly 1.5 million visitors per year and exhibiting over 28,000 artifacts of science and technology.

The inclusion of Chou’s press in the new exhibit comes six years after MIT’s Technology Review named nanoimprint lithography one of "ten emerging technologies that will change the world.”

The magazine wrote in 2003 that “ultimately, nanoimprinting could become the method of choice for cheap and easy fabrication of nano features in such products as optical components for communications and gene chips for diagnostic screening.”

Photo courtesy of Deutsches Museum