Lightning Rods for Nanoelectronics

dcunning writes "Over the last several years (in my short view) there has been a fairly constant hum as to whether or not processors will continue to be able to keep up with Moore's law. Usually this question (and the arguments answering it) is phrased in terms of the ability to continue to shrink transistors/wires/etc. and escape such things as electron tunneling, etc. Scientific American has an interesting article titled Lightning Rods for Nanoelectronics discussing the how's and what's of another issue: handling electrostatic charges as devices become smaller (and hence more sensitive to both the shock and the resultant heat.) After all, being able to build a 100GHz chip is useless if merely breathing on it will fry its circuitry."