For most manufacturers, cracks are usually something to be avoided – and the semiconductor industry is no exception. But now physicists in South Korea have shown how initiating and then controlling the spread of nanometre-sized cracks can be used to create pre-designed patterns in a silicon wafer. They say that their approach offers a potentially faster and cheaper alternative to conventional lithography for the fabrication of integrated circuits…..

http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/49614