> Mikael: > > Maybe groups that provide the superior bonding like to be paid for > their IP > investment. I alway maintain that deluxe cost 5 cents extra. Bob > Henderson Hi Bob, Absolutely. I'm not arguing that and maybe I should have phrased the questions slightly differently. I mean, for my research to reach the state when it might be worth going for the commercial etching/bondning I'll have to go through a lot of designs. And if every design I make takes a couple of days to bond before it's possible for me to evaluate that specific design it will take me a very long time to ever request those services. I'm sure there are some small things out there that different groups are doing and using that will push up the bonding efficiency slightly and will make the bonding a lot better, although not as good as the commercial ones. I wasn't really meaning that the companies should give up their entire secrets (which I guess there is an enormous amount of work behind), but I still think that the field in general, and thus the companies as well, would benefit from the researchers being able to optimize their lab-time. If we're able to go through more designs and optimize our applications in less time, there should be more ideas that have time to mature enough to reach the point where it's time to see how to turn it into something commercial. cheers /Mikael