A team from Hewlett-Packard Co. and the University of California at Los Angeles says its work could ultimately lead to computers 100 billion times faster than today's most powerful personal computers. Their findings were published Friday in Science magazine. The ability to shrink those circuits is limited by the wavelength of light. But the researchers said they found a way to construct the circuits using a chemical process, making the switches as small as a molecule. They believe the process could lead to components much smaller than today's smallest transistors.
Smaller transistors consume less power and generally switch on and off more quickly.
They also can be produced in greater quantities without raising production costs. James Heath, a UCLA chemistry professor who worked on the project, said his team did this by creating a new compound, called rotaxane, which grows in a crystalline structure. Kuekes' teams said the rotaxane molecules, sandwiched between metal electrodes, functioned as logic gates. Computers are now based on silicon chips. The information they carry is etched onto them, and it is becoming harder and harder to do this precisely on ever-smaller chips.