OREANDA-NEWS. December 23, 2010. Researchers at the Tallinn University of Technology are working with IBM and Ericsson to create three-dimensional electronic chips for mass production.The 3.8-million-euro EU project called Diamond is developing the next step in computer technology.

Electronic microchips, which are currently placed side by side, would in the future be stacked on top of one another to give added functionality to computers and cellular phones. Scientists can already do this, but as university researcher Jaan Raik told ETV, "the entire technology is very unstable."

He explained that the various building blocks have become so tiny - and yet so complex - that the loss of a single atom may cause a device to malfunction. This makes the existing solutions very vulnerable to environmental changes.