Currently, wires on a chip can't cross. They have to be laid over one another in layers, adding to a chip's size and slowing it down. With quantum corrals, waves can propagate through one another, so lots of signals could criss-cross on the same layer. Chips could be smaller and faster. Like the other nano inventions, the very existence of quantum corrals has only recently been discovered.
Real products are a long way off.
It's just downright cool,'' Eigler says. More to come. Other potential applications of nanotechnology stretch in all directions. Though Lucent and IBM have been among the most aggressive companies in the field, Motorola, Raytheon and Hewlett-Packard have nanotech projects. Major companies in less tech-oriented industries will begin to realize that nanotech can affect them, and they'll dive into research.