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Optical Transistor Made From Single Molecule
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from ETH Zurich have recently managed to create an optical transistor from a single molecule in what is yet another important achievement on the road to quantum computing. The molecule itself is about 2 nanometers in size, much smaller than standard transistors, which means that a lot more could be integrated in a single chip. Dr. Hwang, lead author of the academic paper, said, 'Our single-molecule optical transistor generates almost negligible amount of heat. When a single molecule absorbs one photon, there is some probability (quantum yield) that the molecule emits a photon out. The rest of the energy absorbed turns into heat in the matrix. For the case of the specific hydrocarbon molecule that we use, the quantum yield is near 100%. So almost no heat is generated.'"
If one photon is absorbed and one emitted where does the heat energy come from. The molecule must be absorbing more than one photon, or is it also being "powered" so that the absorbtion can take place?
do quantum transistors suffer from leakage? if so, while this is an excellent piece of engineering on it's own, it's pretty useless in practice as any data would just get lost in the fudge.
Everything in the article focused on the heat loss, energy efficiency and potential throughput, but no reasons were specifically given as to why this would succeed where Electronic processors have broken down other than 'Photons are beter than Electrons'.
How close can these new transistors get before they start contaminating each other's states?
Would these not be more suceptable to outside interference (Stray cosmic rays, shining a torch on it?)
Okay, maybe not the shining a torch on it. But if a single molecule transistor is hit by a stray photon, it *will* affect it's state surely. If so are they going to have abour 20 transistors doing the calculations and matching them for discrepencies?
The article raises more questions than it answers. Maybe I just don't know enough about quantum computing, but I'd like the answers all the same.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
I took a biophotonics course at university. The reason they don't teach this much: its dense, and extremely difficult. While the equations might look pretty in Transmission / Waves class, when you actually get down to the scale of molecules and the like, with all of the complications that entails, it is virtually impossible to make meaningful sense of the mathematical results. The best you can do is a computer simulation, which is occasionally useful, and of course test in the lab.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
This just blows my mind away, the leaps and bounds that can be made with just a few of these emergent techs is, is.... WOW! While I have never been one completely on the tail of Kurzweils futurism visions of the singularity, this is one step closer to that vision, right? I mean, seems to me that the power of computing with this technology will help us approach that figure where the interconnecting happening within our CPU cycles gets near the same 'mass' as whatever it is that happens in our grey matter between our ears as a species. What was it, something like 10 Teracycles?
Bowling Balls are not single molecules. They are constructed with a weighted core surrounded by a polymer resin.
However, pure crystals are technically very large molecules. And they can get very large.