Lucent's New Chip Is Just One Molecule Thick

lotusFlow writes: "According to this NYTimes article, Lucent has developed a chip with a layer of transistors that is one molecule thick. This development is considered a new tep above nanotech because "here you direct the molecules with self-assembly to go where you want them to go." Commercial applications of this technology are years in the making, of course."

Comments

Nice work and all,...

[nickgrieve]

"It shows what can be the ultimate limit for transistors," Dr. Schön said. The technology is years away from commercial applications.

Nice work and all, but just looks like more "In five to ten years" tech to me... Speaking of which, what are we using now that was 5 to 10 years away in 199x?

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one "molecule"?

[motherfuckin_spork]

you do realize that there are some freakin' huge-ass molecules out there. this isn't one "atom"... it says one molecule... big, big difference.

Re:quantum effects?

[caffeinated_bunsen]

Quantum effects happen over distances that are significantly smaller than the 'diameter' of an electron, a couple orders of magnitude smaller than an atom, much less a 60+ molecule buckytube.

#include <IAAP.h>

Erm, no. There's really no set limit to the distances over which quantum mechanical behavior can be observed, though it's most often restricted to sub-molecular scales. Quantum mechanics is required to describe pretty much any behavior of single electrons accurately. The 'size' of an atom is determined by the uncertainty in position of its bound electrons. Molecular bonding is a quantum phenomenon. Carbon buckytubes exhibit superconductivity precisely because quantum effects manifest themselves over distances several times the interatomic separation. Bose-Einstein condensates form when all the particles of a piece of matter fall into the same quantum state (i.e. they differ only by position). Still, quantum effects are usually only seen in molecular and smaller scale systems.

As for molecular computing, the molecules in question are mid-sized organic molecules, 2 benzene-type rings with a sulfur atom at each end (according to the diagram in the earlier article). These are large enough that one doesn't have to worry much about each interacting with the next, except at absurdly low temperatures. Even so, each transistor is composed of many molecules in parallel, and the distance scale of the transistor as a whole is much too large to worry about quantum interactions between transistors screwing up your calculations.