HP's Crossbar Latch... Next-Gen Transistor?

moojin writes "CNN.com reports that "in a paper published in Tuesday's Journal of Applied Physics, HP said three members of its Quantum Science Research group propose and demonstrate a "crossbar latch," which provides the signal restoration and inversion required for general computing without the need for transistors.""

Comments

Be sure to also read..

[Karamchand]

..the Original statement by HP and even more important HP's paper in the Journal of Applied Physics.

Since it's a technical story...

[GillBates0]

and since money.cnn.com is a business publication:

EETimes story

It's Patent #6586965

The problem is leakage.

[Dylan Thomas]

Making processors faster and more complex generally means getting smaller. After all, an electron can only move so fast... if you want to get it from one point to another even faster, you've got to bring those two points closer together. The challenge is that if wires start getting too close together, you get leakage--electrons jumping from one channel to another--and leaky processors don't process so well.

As near as I can tell, what they've done here is implement levels of titanium and platinum nano-wires which pass each at right angle. However, to prevent leakage, at the crossover points they are held apart by Rotaxan molecules.

Rotaxan molecules are organic, and have this nifty little molecular ring which enables them to be conductive or not based on its position. Thus, you get your binary switch. This little animal is the "crossbar latch," apparently. And it can be done in something like 40 nanometers, making it scads smaller than current conductive strips.

Unfortunately, I'm having a great deal of trouble tracking down technical details. HP wants to keep its secrets, obviously, but Berkely and Stanford should be a little more forthcoming, think I. Anyone have links to more technical information? It would be greatly appreciated...