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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)