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When I waltzed off to high school
with my new Nokia phone,
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I thought I just had the new,
coolest replacement
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for my old pink princess walkie-talkie.
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Except now, my friends and I
could text or talk to each other
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wherever we were,
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instead of pretending,
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when we were running around
each other's back yards.
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Now, be honest.
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Back then, I didn't think a lot
about how these devices were made.
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They tended to show up
on Christmas morning,
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so maybe they were made
by the elves in Santa's workshop.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Who do you think the real elves
that make these devices are?
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If I ask a lot of the people I know,
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they would say it's the hoodie-wearing
software engineers in Silicon Valley,
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hacking away a code.
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But a lot has to happen to these devices
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before they're ready for any kind of code.
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These devices start at the atomic level.
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So if you ask me,
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the real elves are the chemists.
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That's right, I said the chemists.
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Chemistry is the hero
of electronic communications.
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And my goal today is to convince you
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to agree with me.
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OK, let's start simple,
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and take a look inside these
insanely addictive devices.
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Because without chemistry,
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what is an information
superhighway that we love,
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would just be a really expensive,
shiny paperweight.
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Chemistry enables all of these layers.
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Let's start at the display.
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How do you think we get
those bright, vivid colors
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that we love so much?
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Well, I'll tell you.
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There's organic polymers
embedded within the display,
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that can take electricity and turn it
into the blue, red and green
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that we enjoy in our pictures.
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What if we move down to the battery?
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Now there's some intense research.
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How do we take the chemical principles
of traditional batteries
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and pair it with new,
high surface area electrodes,
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so we could pack more charge
in a smaller footprint of space,
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so that we could power
our devices all day long,
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while we're taking selfies,
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without having to recharge our batteries
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or sit tethered to an electrical outlet.
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What if we go to the adhesives
that bind it all together,
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so that it could withstand
our frequent usage?
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After all, as a millennial,
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I have to take my phone out
at least 200 times a day to check it,
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and in the process,
drop it two to three times.
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But what are the real brains
of these devices?
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What makes them work
the way that we love them so much?
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Well that all has to do
with electrical components and circuitry
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that are tethered
to a printed circuit board.
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Or maybe you prefer a biological metaphor,
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the motherboard,
you might have heard of that.
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Now, the printed circuit board
doesn't really get talked about a lot.
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And I'll be honest,
I don't know why that is.
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Maybe it's because
it's the least sexy layer
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and it's hidden beneath all of those
other sleek-looking layers.
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But it's time to finally give this
Clark Kent layer
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the Superman-worthy praise it deserves.
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And so I ask you a question.
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What do you think
a printed circuit board is?
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Well, consider a metaphor.
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Think about the city that you live in.
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You have all these points of interest
that you want to get to:
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your home, your work, restaurants,
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a couple of Starbucks on every block.
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And so we build roads
that connect them all together.
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That's what a printed circuit board is.
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Except, instead of having
things like restaurants,
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we have transistors on chips,
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capacitors, resistors,
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all of these electrical components
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that need to find a way
to talk to each other.
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And so what are our roads?
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Well, we build tiny copper wires.
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So the next question is,
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how do we make these tiny copper wires?
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They're really small.
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Could it be that we go
to the hardware store,
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pick up a spool of copper wire,
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get some wire cutters, a little clip-clip,
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saw it all up and then, bam --
we have our printed circuit board?
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No way.
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These wires are way too small for that.
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And so we have to rely
on our friend, chemistry.
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Now, the chemical process
to make these tiny copper wires
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is seemingly simple.
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We start with a solution
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of positively charged copper spheres.
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We then add to it an insulating
printed circuit board.
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And we feed those
positively charged spheres
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negatively charged electrons,
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by adding formaldehyde to the mix.
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So you might remember formaldehyde.
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Really distinct odor,
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used to preserve frogs in biology class.
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Well it turns out it can do
a lot more than just that.
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And it's a really key component
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to making these tiny copper wires.
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You see, the electrons
on formaldehyde have a drive.
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They want to jump over to those
positively charged copper spheres.
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And that's all because of a process
known as redox chemistry.
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And when that happens,
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we can take these positively
charged copper spheres,
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and turn them into bright,
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shiny, metallic and conductive copper.
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And once we have conductive copper,
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now we're cooking with gas.
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And we can get all
of those electrical components
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to talk to each other.
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So thank you once again to chemistry.
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And let's take a thought
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and think about how far
we've come with chemistry.
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Clearly, in electronic communications,
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size matters.
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So let's think about
how we can shrink down our devices.
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So that we can go from our 1990s
Zack Morris cell phone,
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to something a little bit more sleek,
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like the phones of today
that can fit in our pockets.
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Although, let's be real here:
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absolutely nothing can fit
into ladies' pants pockets,
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if you can find a pair of pants
that has pockets.
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(Laughter)
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And, I don't think chemistry
can help us with that problem.
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But more important
that shrinking the actual device,
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how do we shrink
the circuitry inside of it,
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and shrink it by 100 times,
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so that we can take the circuitry
from the micron scale
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all the way down to the nanometer scale?
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Because, let's face it,
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right now we all want more powerful
and faster phones.
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Well, more power and faster
requires more circuitry.
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So how do we do this?
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It's not like we have some magic
electromagnetic shrink ray,
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like professor Wayne Szalinsky used
in "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids"
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to shrink his children.
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On accident, of course.
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Or do we?
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Well, actually, in the field,
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there's a process
that's pretty similar to that.
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And it's name is photolitography.
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In photolitography,
we take electromagnetic radiation,
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or what we tend to call light,
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and we use it to shrink down
some of that circuitry,
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so that we could cram more of it
into a really small space.
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Now, how does this work?
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Well, we start with a substrate
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that has a light sensitive film on it.
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We then cover it with a mask
that has a pattern on top of it
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of fine lines and features,
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that are going to make the phone work
the way that we want it to.
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We then expose a bright light
and shine it through this mask,
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which creates a shadow
of that pattern on the surface.
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Now, anywhere that the light
can get through the mask,
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it's going to cause
a chemical reaction to occur.
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And that's going to burn the image
of that pattern into the substrate.
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So the question you're probably asking is,
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how do we go from a burned image
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to clean fine lines and features?
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And for that, we have to use
a chemical solution
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called the developer.
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Now the developer is special.
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What it can do is take
all of the nonexposed areas
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and remove them selectively,
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leaving behind clean
fine lines and features,
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and making our miniaturized devices work.
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So, we've used chemistry now
to build up our devices,
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and we've used it
to shrink down our devices.
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So I've probably convinced you
that chemistry is the true hero,
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and we could wrap it up there.
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(Applause)
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Hold on, we're not done.
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Not so fast.
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Because, we're all human.
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And as a human, I always want more.
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And so now I want to think
about how to use chemistry
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to extract more out of a device.
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Right now, we're being told
that we want something called 5G,
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or the promised
fifth generation of wireless.
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Now, you might have heard of 5G
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in commercials
that are starting to appear.
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Or maybe some of you even experienced it
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in the 2018 winter Olympics.
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What I'm most excited about for 5G
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is that, when I'm late,
running out of the house to catch a plane,
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I can download movies
onto my device in 40 seconds
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as opposed to 40 minutes.
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But once true 5G is here,
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it's going to be a lot more
than how many movies
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we can put on our device.
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So the question is,
why is true 5G not here?
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And I'll let you in on a little secret.
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It's pretty easy to answer.
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It's just plain hard to do.
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You see, if you used
those traditional materials and copper
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to build 5G devices,
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the signal can't make it
to its final destination.
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Traditionally, we use really rough
insulating layers
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to support copper wires.
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Think about Velcro fasteners.
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It's the roughness of the two pieces
that make them stick together.
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That's pretty important
if you want to have a device
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that's going to last longer
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than it takes you to rip it out of the box
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and start installing
all of your apps on it.
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But this roughness causes a problem.
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You see, at the high speeds for 5G
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the signal has to travel
close to that roughness.
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And it makes it get lost
before it reaches its final destination.
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Think about a mountain range.
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And you have a complex system of roads
that goes up and over it.
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And you're trying
to get to the other side.
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Don't you agree with me
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that it would probably take
a really long time,
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and you would probably get lost,
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if you had to go up and down
all of the mountains,
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as opposed to if you just
drilled a flat tunnel
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that could go straight on through?
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Well it's the same thing
in out 5G devices.
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If we could remove this roughness,
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then we can send the 5G signal
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straight on through uninterrupted.
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Sounds pretty good, right?
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But hold on.
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Didn't I just tell you
that we needed that roughness
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to keep the device together?
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And if we remove it,
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we're in a situation where now the copper
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isn't going to stick
to that underlying substrate.
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Think about building
a house of Lego blocks,
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with all of the nooks and crannies
that latch together,
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as opposed to smooth building blocks.
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Which of the two is going to have
more structural integrity
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when the two-year-old comes
ripping through the living room,
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trying to play Godzilla
and knock everything down?
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But what if we put glue
on those smooth blocks?
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And that's what
the industry is waiting for.
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They're waiting for the chemists
to design new, smooth surfaces
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with increased inherent adhesion
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for some of those copper wires.
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And when we solve this problem,
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and we will solve the problem,
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and we'll work
with physicists and engineers
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to solve all of the challenges of 5G,
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well then the number of applications
is going to skyrocket.
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So yeah, we'll have things
like self-driving cars,
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because now our data networks
can handle the speeds
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and the amount of information
required to make that work.
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But let's start to use imagination.
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I can imagine going into a restaurant
with a friend that has a peanut allergy,
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taking out my phone,
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waving it over the food,
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and having the food tell us
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a really important answer to a question --
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deadly or safe to consume?
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Or maybe our devices will get so good
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at processing information about us,
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that they'll become
like our personal trainers.
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And they'll know the most efficient way
for us to burn calories.
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I know come November,
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when I'm trying to burn off
some of these pregnancy pounds,
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I would love a device
that could tell me how to do that.
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I really don't know
another way of saying it,
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except chemistry is just cool.
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And it enables all of these
electronic devices.
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So the next time you send a text
or take a selfie,
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think about all those atoms
that are hard at work
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and the innovation that came before them.
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Who knows,
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maybe even some of you
listening to this talk,
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perhaps even on your mobile device,
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will decide that you too
want to play sidekick
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to Captain Chemistry,
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the true hero of electronic devices.
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Thank you for your attention,
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and thank you chemistry.
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(Applause)