Thousand Bonds
A single readout module from the silicon vertex detector of HERA-B, an experiment at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg that attempted to further our understanding of CP-violation (why there is lots of matter in the universe but hardly any antimatter).
I helped to assemble and test these little beauties and was given a dead one as a leaving gift, which I treasure. Finally I have the gear to photograph it, I hope I've done it justice.
This is a 1:1 macro (best viewed large!) of some of the thousands of tiny bond wires that carried the signal from the wafer itself to the readout electronics. As it was all done semi-manually, the bonds on each module could take up to an hour to attach (by skilled technicians.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_bonding
More explanation here...
Thousand Bonds
A single readout module from the silicon vertex detector of HERA-B, an experiment at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg that attempted to further our understanding of CP-violation (why there is lots of matter in the universe but hardly any antimatter).
I helped to assemble and test these little beauties and was given a dead one as a leaving gift, which I treasure. Finally I have the gear to photograph it, I hope I've done it justice.
This is a 1:1 macro (best viewed large!) of some of the thousands of tiny bond wires that carried the signal from the wafer itself to the readout electronics. As it was all done semi-manually, the bonds on each module could take up to an hour to attach (by skilled technicians.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_bonding
More explanation here...