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Bell Labs Scientists Usher in New Era of Molecular-Scale Electronics
Murray Hills - Oct 17, 2001 Scientists from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have created organic transistors with a single-molecule channel length, setting the stage for a new class of high-speed, inexpensive carbon-based electronics. The size of a transistor's channel -- the space between its electrodes -- influences its output current and switching speed. In these new molecular-scale transistors, fabricated by a multidisciplinary team of Bell Labs researchers, the length of one molecule defines the channel's physical dimension; it is more than a factor of ten smaller than anything that has been demonstrated even with the most advanced lithography techniques. The breakthrough is reported in the October 18th issue of the journal Nature. Scientists have been looking for alternatives to conventional silicon electronics for many years, because they anticipate that the continuing miniaturization of silicon-based integrated circuits will subside in approximately a decade as fundamental physical limits are reached. Some of this research has been aimed at producing molecular-scale transistors, in which single molecules are responsible for the transistor action - switching and amplifying electrical signals.
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