Substrate

From Wikinfo

The word substrate can mean the following:

• In biochemistry, a substrate is a molecule which is acted upon by an enzyme.
• In industrial printing, substrate is used to describe the base material that images will be printed onto. Depending on the printing process and end use of the product, these materials include (though are not limited to) films, foils, textiles, fabrics, plastics, and any variety of paper (lightweight, heavyweight, coated, uncoated, paperboard, cardboard, etc.).
• In the semiconductor industry a substrate is a wafer of material, normally a single crystal, upon which semiconductor devices can be fabricated using epitaxial crystal growth and photolithography. Depending on the material and application the substrates can be between 5 and 30 cm in diameter. They are prepared by cutting large synthetic cylindrical crystal boules (or ingots) into slices and polishing the surface to a high degree of smoothness.
• In biology, a substrate is an environment in which an organism lives, and which it feeds on. For example, in many households, a bruised apple is a substrate for the growth of a fungus.
• In neuroscience, a neural substrate is the set of brain structures that underlies a specific behavior or psychological state.
• In linguistics, a substrate or substratum refers to linguistic influences that are transmitted from the language(s) formerly spoken in a given region into a new language which later spreads there. Substrate influence takes place during a process of language shift, where the original inhabitants of the region abandon their language in favor of the newcomers' one. Substrate influence typically involves borrowing of words and place names, but it can also affect the grammar and phonology of the spreading language.
• In Plating, a substrate is usually a metal (such as iron, brass, aluminum or neodynium) which is plated with a metal (e.g. nickel) which has different physical properties such as greater hardness or resistance to oxidation.

References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Substrate" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substrate, used under the GNU Free Documentation License