ELECTRONICS took another step into the nanoworld this week, as three research groups announced new ways to make molecule-sized transistors-the beating hearts of microchips.
The smaller the components on a chip, the closer they can be packed together-and the faster they can communicate. That means denser memory chips and faster microprocessors. Transistors in today’s commercial silicon microchips measure about 100 nanometres wide and are still shrinking, but the day will dawn sometime in the next two decades when existing etching technologies will be unable to make transistors any smaller. So engineers want to know if single molecules-at just a few…
