The Art Neuro Weblog

Breakthrough In Nanotechnology
Pleiades sent in this 'Wired' article about quantum mechanics computing.

Scientists at the University of Arizona have discovered how to use quantum mechanics to turn molecules into working transistors in the lab, a breakthrough that might one day lead to high-powered computers the size of a postage stamp.

Results of the as-yet-unpublished study came together just weeks before Canadian researchers performed a similar feat using chemical means. That experiment appeared in the journal Nature last week. Together, the two studies could bring the final frontier in nanocomputing -- a single-molecule transistor -- considerably closer to reality.

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The smallest transistors in consumer electronics devices today measure 50 nanometers across -- a million times tinier than their postwar progenitors. (This shrinkage would be equivalent to reducing the continental United States to the size of a hot tub.) Taking transistors down another one or two orders of magnitude, to the
realm of individual atoms and molecules, requires a generational leap in technology.
Three years ago, scientists at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard and Cornell universities announced the fabrication of a transistor from a single organic molecule. But these delicate circuits only operated at single-digit temperatures above absolute zero.

Both the Nature paper and the Arizona study propose transistors able to handle room-temperature environments -- although scaling such designs as these up to mass-production levels still will require years of research and development.

Orgmolec! The future is now! Cyberpunk lives. One day I'll be able to store the entire series of 'Seinfeld' in my neural-activity-controller brain-computer. Yadda yadda yadda. :)

- Art Neuro