Explosive Surprises In The WorksExplosive Surprises In The Works

Would-be notebook computer, PDA, and cell-phone thieves could soon hear a warning familiar to viewers of the old TV show Mission: Impossible: "This machine will self-destruct in 10 seconds ..." And it would.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, accidentally discovered a way to blow up silicon chips cleanly. Post-doctorate fellow Frederic Mikulec was working with a porous silicon wafer when he substituted one ingredient, gadolinium nitrate, for potassium nitrate. When he tried to cleave the wafer, "it blew up in his face," says Michael Sailor, the lab's director.

The explosion was small, like a child's cap gun, but the flame was extremely clean burning. With no chemical impurities, the mixture is ideal for instant field analysis of potentially toxic elements. And because the method is detonated by an electrical signal, it can be triggered remotely, with great precision. That, Sailor says, would create useful military applications.

Companies with sensitive information on portable devices could protect the data from falling into competitors' hands. A business could include a self-destruct mechanism in a computer chip that destroys the machine and any data stored in it, Sailor says. If the device itself is top secret, such as a prototype, it could be destroyed before anyone figures out how it works.

The blast wouldn't hurt anyone, but it would destroy the device, Sailor says.

What makes the technology feasible for industrial and business deployment, he says, is that the process of creating the explosive chip is similar to conventional silicon-fabrication techniques. Only a minute amount of the gadolinium nitrate is needed, and it would be easy to add that step to the fabrication process.