TAMING EXPLOSIVE CHIPS
Exploding silicon chips will soon find their way into car airbags, in the first application of a bizarre effect accidentally discovered by Dmitri Kovalev at the Technical University in Munich, Germany. During an experiment on a piece of porous silicon, the sample exploded and wrecked the lab (Â鶹´«Ã½, 4 August 2001, p 15).
Tests showed that the massive internal surface area makes the silicon oxidise explosively, and researchers at the University of California, San Diego, later worked out how to trigger the effect electrically. Now the Munich team is collaborating with TRW Airbag Systems of…
