Stop 107 of 109 · Etched in Silicon
2001 · Le Locle, Switzerland
The Watch Part Cut Like a Computer Chip
In 2001, a watchmaker etched an escapement wheel from silicon using the same processes that build microchips, a part that needs no oil at all.
In 2001, the Ulysse Nardin Freak became the first watch with silicon parts inside its movement: the escape wheels of its Dual Direct escapement, the mechanism that releases a watch's stored power in tiny, regular clicks, were cut from silicon rather than steel.
The process was borrowed directly from the semiconductor industry: light through a mask marks a pattern onto a silicon wafer, and deep reactive-ion etching, the same "Bosch process" used to make microchips, alternates a plasma etch with a thin protective coating, cutting straight down through the wafer in hundreds of tiny steps. A single wafer can yield hundreds of finished parts at once.
Silicon has real advantages here: it's about a third the weight of steel, entirely non-magnetic, and hard enough that its moving surfaces need no lubricating oil at all, unlike a traditional steel escapement, which depends on oil that eventually thickens and ages.
Other makers followed quickly. Patek Philippe introduced its own monocrystalline silicon escape wheel in 2005, and silicon parts, immune to both magnets and ageing oil, are now common in mechanical watches from a number of makers.