Molecule Sized Transistors

IceFoot writes "Bell Labs announced it has created organic transistors with a single-molecule channel length, more than a factor of ten smaller than anything that has been demonstrated even with the most advanced lithography techniques. The really cool part is the transistors assemble themselves: the molecules do the work of finding the electrodes and attaching themselves. Webcast on Wednesday, October 17, 2001 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time"

Comments

Step one accomplished...

[InfinityWpi]

Now for step 2: Can we do this and make it cost-efficient?

And Step 3: Can we make new things with this that we couldn't before, or will this just help us shrink down current things?

And Step 4: How can this make us more money (only the salespeople worry about this one)?

And don't forget Step 5: How can this get us laid (only the engineers typically worry about that one)?

And what are the specs?

[wowbagger]

What is the transconductance? The maximum switching speed? The gain/bandwidth product? In short, where are all the specs on this transistor that a real engineer would need to evaluate it?

I don't care if you can make a transistor with a gate length of .1 Planck length, if the thing only has gain below 1 Hz it won't be very useful.

Until Bell releases some more data on how this device can perform, don't get too excited....

I saw the webcast

[CmdrTroll]

My employer has a substantial stake in the chip business, and most of us from the Custom ASIC department huddled around a large monitor over lunch today to watch this. Their techniques are fascinating and may someday revolutionize the way we build circuits.

However, the thing that they do not mention in the announcement is that Bell Labs continues to have problems with the chemical bonds between molecules decaying quickly on these transistors. It is similar to the problems that plague engineers of DNA processors, another cutting-edge-but-hopelessly-broken technology. In fact, despite all of these new achievements that promise to revolutionize the industry, silicon is still king and will be king for many years to come.

-CT

Where are have the good electrodes gone?

[12agnarok]

The really cool part is the transistors assemble themselves: the molecules do the work of finding the electrodes and attaching themselves

Great, now even my transistor will find a significant other before I do.

Reliability

[BlackGriffen]

With single molecule transistors, wouldn't there be reliability concerns? After all, the uncertainty principle could wreak havoc on a circuit that is too small. Both information processing and durability would be hampered.

BlackGriffen

Molecular Transistors have already been done

[caesar-auf-nihil]

While the work done at Bell labs does indeed look unique, this experiment and breakthrough has technically already been done by Prof. James Tour (at Rice University) and Prof. Mark Reid of Yale who, in a very high-tech experiment, showed that a single molecule can conduct. It was similar to the structure shown in the Bell labs work, except it was one benzene rather than two. Tour and Reid also used self-assembly to get the molecules to line up to check conductance. The work was published in Science in late 1999.
Further, Tour and his group have synthesized molecular transistors (he calls them "Moleisters") about a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, I can't bring up his web pages to find the reference to the papers.

We've got good news and bad news...

[hoggoth]

The good news:
Bell Labs scientists Zhenan Bao and Hendrik Schon have fabricated molecular-scale organic transistors.

The bad news:
As you can see in the picture, they are REALLY BIG molecules!