IBM says that one of its researchers at Yorktown Heights, New York has invented a process in which a defect in wiring between integrated circuits can induce its own repair: the technique is for places where the copper wiring on the board has a defect in it that creates a near open circuit, and involves a variation of electroplating – when a sufficiently high current is passed through a wire with a constriction, more heat is generated at that location than elsewhere on the wire, and as a result of the temperature rise, a deposition process is induced and the constriction becomes plated with metal such as copper that is transferred from cooler parts of the wire through the electrolyte; so little material is needed to fill up a constriction that there is no appreciable effect on the rest of the wire; the technique is self-locating, self-terminating and enables multiple faults on a wire to be repaired at the same time.
