This beautiful coral-like structure comes not from an expedition to
the Great Barrier Reef, but from an industrial research project based at
Wembley in north London. There, GEC Marconi is experimenting with a technique
for depositing microscopic metallic features onto the surfaces of electrical
components such as printed circuit boards and integrated circuits. The ‘reef’
is a spot of gold just 400 micrometres across.
The micrograph, taken by Frank Page of the Institute of Polymer Technology
and Materials Engineering at the University of Loughborough – one of GEC’s
partners in the project – won first prize in the Leica Cambridge Stereoscan
Micrograph Award. Chris Bocking, the project leader at GEC’s Hirst Research
Centre, explained that when the new technique works normally, high-quality
gold bumps are produced, but under extreme conditions, dendritic features
like those in the illustration.
