Complexity Management in Manufacturing Microsystems: Remarks on Artificial and Natural Systems Comparison

摘要

In order to improve the efficiency in manufacturing complex Microsystems, a comparison between artificial and natural systems "growing" mechanisms and architecture have been investigated. As an example we have compared the process to fabricate a microelectronic chip with a size of % of square centimeter and the biological process needed to make a similar size biological cell: a wheat grain. Just estimating the energy needed to make the two systems, we see that the energy balance differs of about three orders of magnitude. In fact, to make the silicon microchip of that size with a medium complexity, the energy used is more than 1 kWh, while a wheat grain energy need is less than 1 Wh. If we consider, following a common thinking, that the artificial processes are conceived as an emulation of the natural processes, this strong difference in the energy balance appears a quite strange surprise. Moreover, it is worth taking into account that the complexity of a biological eukaryotic cell is much higher than the microchip one. The understanding of mechanisms the biologic world uses to achieve its extraordinary efficiency, is very important to design cheaper artificial manufacturing processes to make systems more and more complex when the minimum dimensions the process is able to control inside the system goes in the range of nanometers.