MichelK schrijft: "Wetenschappers van de 'University of California' in Los Angeles zijn er in geslaagd om een electronische schakelaar te maken die aan èn uit geschakeld kan worden in tegenstelling tot eerdere pogingen waarbij moleculaire schakelaars hun 'state' maar één keer konden veranderen.":
Chemists at the University of California at Los Angeles are reporting a further advance in the effort to produce electronic circuitry on a molecular scale.
In an article being published today in the journal Science, the U.C.L.A. team says it has succeeded in using a molecule to create an electronic switch that can be reconfigured -- that is, it can be turned on and off, and on again -- like a transistor.
Previous research had produced molecular switches that could change their state only once -- on to off, or vice versa -- or could operate only for a limited time or at very low temperatures.
The latest achievement is a significant step toward building a new generation of memory devices and computers that are far more powerful and consume less power than today's microelectronic systems.
The advance is part of a quest for electronic circuits that are perhaps one-thousandth the size of today's transistors, which are made lithographically by etching circuits on silicon with light.
In the future, arrays of billions of circuits would self-assemble by means of chemical reactions, which would make individual circuits far less costly.
Check voor het hele artikel de New York Times.