Engineers' recent advances in MEMS technologies may have opened the door for smart, mobile surgical instruments that can assist a surgeon by tracking tissue data and providing sensory information. Another active area of nanotechnology, nanotube research, will increasingly allow engineers and scientists to fabricate nanoscale devices. Cylindrical, carbon nanotubes have electrical properties, are stronger than steel, and are only a few atoms wide. Beyond carbon, the diversity of available nanoscale wire materials is increasing. Silicon nanowires, for example, will increase the flexibility and function of emerging nanodevices, Lieber says.
Many experts say yes.
Through his research in silicon nanoelectronics as director of the Microelectronics Research Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, James Meindl, electrical and computer engineering professor, has defined the fundamental limit for the minimum amount of energy needed to perform the most basic computing operation, binary logic switching that changes a 0 to a 1 or vice-versa. At the third tier are device limits, at the fourth tier are circuit limits, and at the final tier are system limits. As you go up the hierarchy, Meindl explains, the limits are more subject to the creative innovations of engineers. Some engineers are slower to declare a limit on the smallest levels that electrical and computer devices or nanotechnology will reach. Limits or not, nanotechnology research is just getting warmed up.