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Technology Science

Single Molecule Transistor A Reality 325

Posted by CowboyNeal from the talking-fruit-still-vapor dept.
Petersko writes "A team from the University of Alberta has proven for the first time that a single molecule can switch electrical currents off and on, a puzzle that scientists worldwide have been trying to crack for decades. The finding could revolutionize the field of electronics, providing a leap ahead for everything from computers to batteries to medical equipment."
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Single Molecule Transistor A Reality More

Single Molecule Transistor A Reality

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  • How long until it's usable? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LordKazan ( 558383 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @06:24PM (#12709393) Homepage Journal
    That's freaking sweet, but how long until we see this filtering into usable technology?
    • quite a while I would guess.
      Mass production needs to be feasable.
      -nB
    • From TFA:

      While a computer using this new technology is at least a decade away
      ...
      • While a computer using this new technology is at least a decade away

        It's always "a decade away" for these people, just like it's always 30 years for the AI people. Estimates like that seem less an informed guess and more an expression of confidence.

        By the way, your sig:

        Vader:You're either with me, or my enemy/Bush:You're either with or against us/Obi-Wan:Only the Sith deal in absolutes

        So you caught Lucas's sorry attempt at political commentary?

        Yoda: Do, or do not. There is no try.

        Huh.
        • So you caught Lucas's sorry attempt at political commentary?

          Will anyone catch yours?

        • "
          Vader:You're either with me, or my enemy/Bush:You're either with or against us/Obi-Wan:Only the Sith deal in absolutes

          So you caught Lucas's sorry attempt at political commentary?

          Yoda: Do, or do not. There is no try.

          Huh."

          Well, there is a difference between those statements in my opinion. From a philosophical viewpoint, (or a metaphysical one to be more specific) the Mind does not deal in Failure - any and all actions taken succeed. If it is failure you undertake - it is failure you will succeed at.

          Thi
          • In fact - its amazing how much Jedi philosophy, which is generally thought of as fictional religios beliefs, is so closely related to the high levels concepts of Bujinkan...

            "There's this huge following, which is weird. They have big meets and conventions, and I find it all a bit frightening."
            - Ewan McGregor
        • Only the Sith deal in absolutes

          Has anyone caught the obvious irony of this statement?
        • AI has not been proven experimentally in a lab, needing only industrialization engineering to make the science a reality.

          BTW, just because Lucas' simple philosophy is understood by most before we finish elementary school doesn't mean that George Bush ever understood it. Or that it's wrong, even though Bush might say different. But of course, since the facts are biased against Bush, he needs your help to prop up his hideous propaganda.

          But at least you wear your worldview on your sleeve (or your .sig):

          "In
      • Vader:You're either with me, or my enemy/Bush:You're either with or against us/Obi-Wan:Only the Sith deal in absolutes

        Do, or do not. There is no 'try'/Yoda

        Your TV education is showing.
      • We're still waiting for some of the stuff that was a decade away a decade ago.
    • I would predict that now that it has been determined to be possible it will be a while before big companies pick up this technology and begin testing with it. TFA didn't mention the cost of manufacturing products using this technology, or the reliability and durability of the technology. at such a small scale if a molecule was shifted even a very small amount, it could render the device unusable. Also, I don't know of any methods of mass producing these types of nano-technology. It could be quite a while (1
    • It's funny ya know. There once was a time where if you were a researcher at a university and you discovered something like this you'd actually go form a company and make a billion dollar industry. Now people have so given up on turning research into products that they just publish their results and hope one of the big boys takes their work and turns it into something useful.
      • The patent is applied for in the name of the University. The individual does not own it. If he tries to start a company, he will end up losing both the company and his university job. This is the same with patents owned by any company one might work for.
        • Blah, fake your results, say it doesn't work, quit, start a company. Easy. This particular case is bogus academic crap but I'm sure there's cases where it happens.
        • Or in this case, by RTFA, you find out that "Wolkow and the University of Alberta have filed for a U.S. patent on the technology.".

          So universities that actually don't want to screw-over their researchers, and want researchers to actually hang around, rather than leaving to keep their intellectual property will do a joint-patent of some sort.

          N.
        • As I recall when I was an undergrad (and, I believe when you're a postgrad), the university owns any IP you produce as part of your course (or, presumably, research). They can take it and spin it off into a separate company themselves (as often happens), and generally aren't obligated to reimburse you for the work. However, they usually do cut the actual inventor in for a slice since otherwise they'd start losing their best/most profitable researchers to other institutions that did.

          On the one hand it can
    • I was thinking the same thing. It's great that it can "revolutionize computing as we know it", but when will it be available to the average consumer or even commercially?


    • 20 years ago or so I heard the first about digital TV. So more or less not in my lifetime.

  • Other sources (Score:4, Informative)

    by waynegoode ( 758645 ) * on Thursday June 02, 2005 @06:26PM (#12709417) Homepage
    Also read about it at the University of Alberta website [ualberta.ca] and in the Press release [eurekalert.org]
  • I'm wondering what might happen if some bacteria decides to come around and injest this single molecule? True, the bacteria would probably get a bad case of indigestion, but there are some pretty nasty enzymes in bacteria that are good at breaking down molecules.

  • but how fast is it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidEric ( 658463 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @06:31PM (#12709471)
    It seems if it were a C8H10N4O2 molecule it would switch much faster.
  • on my new super reliable built in redundancy 2 molecule switch, soon I shall be rich beyond my wildest drea.., shit where did I put it on the table again....
  • Moore's law wins again! Well, probably.

  • The article in Nature (Score:3, Informative)

    by waynegoode ( 758645 ) * on Thursday June 02, 2005 @06:35PM (#12709507) Homepage
    Also see the article in Nature [nature.com].
  • ....how are they going to interconnect them? Won't the obligatory interconnect material re-dope the "junction" or alter the molecule behavior?
  • Whooo! Yeah! Rock on! Go UofA!!! Oh, wait, is my Alumni pride supposed to be limited to sporting events? Also, UofC sucks.

  • Really slow device (Score:5, Informative)

    by Husgaard ( 858362 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @06:40PM (#12709552)
    The researcher admits to that: "It takes us on the order of minutes to change conditions that make current go or not, so for any computer technology, this thing is today impractical." [ualberta.ca]

    Still I think this is very interesting news. This is very early research. The speed will probably be improved, and the smaller dimensions of single-molecyle transistors can give space for more hardware to compensate for the speed.

    • "Because we achieved the switching with one electron -- instead of a million electrons as in today's smallest, fastest transistors -- we have the expectation that we can run these things with a million times less power. Imagine the power savings, and it takes less time."

      So, is this just like an "in theory" type statement or what?

      • It's "science by press release," so yes, it's very much a guess.

        Honestly, I'm not sure that molecular electronics will be faster than a high quality silicon or other conventional semiconductor. The speed of charge transfer is slower -- at least for the kinds of molecules people use right now. Switching speeds are slower too (though nowhere near the "several minutes" quoted here.)

        -Geoff

    • Re:Really slow device (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TopSpin ( 753 ) *
      The speed will probably be improved...

      That statement doesn't mean that the device is slow. It only says that it takes the researchers a long time to establish the necessary conditions. The odds are that the device, having vanishingly small mass, can switch at very high frequency. Imagine if you were asked to operate an ordinary light switch using the passenger side rear corner of a dump truck while blindfolded. This is analogous to what it's like to manipulate individual molecules with an STM.

    • No, the smaller dimensions don't really help "give more space" to compensate.

      If the switching speed of an individual transistor is really on the order of minutes, you have a really, really slow chip. No "nanoscale" is going to help you here.

      That's not to say that there aren't faster molecular electronic devices. Despite what the article says, there have been single-molecule transistor experiments for several years. Some can switch on and off much, much faster. (Sorry, I don't know actual speeds from our l
  • And of course, they'll be patenting the device in the name of the Canadian people, whose taxes paid for their research, and whose taxes will be lowered a little by licensing it for the next century, right?
  • I've been doing that for years. I just flip the plastic light switch on my wall, the single polymer molecule in the plastic switch knob seems to turn the lights on and off quite nicely.
  • Until they can make circuits with traces that are only a few hundred or few thousand atoms long, I doubt this molecular switch will be of much use. The capacitance of long interconnecting traces will mean that it will take too long for a switched signal to propagate to the next gate.

    Making a small switch is a great first step. The trick will be to make an entire circuit on this atomic scale so that the switch is matched to the load it must drive.
  • the finding could revolutionize the field of electronics, providing a leap ahead for everything from computers to batteries to medical equipment.
    Yes. And I could have a personal flying machine. And a laptop with a roll-up paper screen. And a very larg paenis powered by cheeep mads lik v|agra.

  • Kind of mediocre article (Score:5, Funny)

    by ZorbaTHut ( 126196 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @06:51PM (#12709639) Homepage
    So efficient is this potential new technology, said Wolkow, that "the question now about the battery life in your laptop would go away. Your battery today would run your computer all week or all month instead of three to four hours."

    Of course, by the time we *can* build CPUs with this technology, we'll be able to build the equivalent of your current laptop into a watch or a cellphone - and the new generation of molecular-CPU laptops will be the same size, massively more powerful, and run for three to four hours. Doh.

    Not only that, but because the microelectronics could eventually be made out of molecules, some computer parts could be biodegradable since molecules can be broken down into small bits.

    "Made out of molecules"? What do you think they're made out of now? Rainbows and unicorns?

    That said, this is damn cool. Miniturization is unstoppable! (At least until these molecular transistors become used in everything - I'm not quite sure where we'll go from there.)
    • Miniturization is unstoppable! (At least until these molecular transistors become used in everything - I'm not quite sure where we'll go from there.)

      There are a couple avenues open, such as using light instead of electrical current. Electrons move around very slowly compared to c.

      • There are a couple avenues open, such as using light instead of electrical current. Electrons move around very slowly compared to c.

        Meh. Photonics is really hard to do on the scale of a chip. You could multiplex easier, but remember that with current CPUs, the wires are much smaller than the wavelength of visible or infrared light.

        Plus, electrons aren't traveling very far on a chip. So even if you get the photons working, you're not saving a lot of time per gate.

        Lots of work, little advantage = little r

    • Rainbows and Unicorns (Score:5, Informative)

      by ghutchis ( 7810 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @09:36PM (#12710720) Homepage
      "Made out of molecules"? What do you think they're made out of now? Rainbows and unicorns?

      Chips aren't made out of molecules. Current semiconductors are made out of various forms of silicon crystal.

      That's a lattice -- there aren't individual "silicon molecules" anywhere in there.

      Just FYI.
      • Uhh...

        The core of any chip might be silicon, but that's of the order 100mm square. There is an awfull lot of other metal, plasics, ink, paint, laquer, lubrication etc that makes up the rest of the computer. Many of those things are "molecular".

      • I've seen two versions: One, the crystal is a really friggen big single molecule.

        The other simply referred to crytals as you did, a lattice.

        But a lattice is made up of ATOMS! And if MOLECULES are recyclable, then Atoms must certainly be! And doubly so... because... because I said!

        Anyway, you can get molecular lattices (not to be confused with things that go in salad) such as window glass.

        You have to admit, grandparents observation was pretty damned funny ;~)
      • Well, I was told in my Chemistry lectures that a crystal is a single, large molecule.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @10:43PM (#12711135)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I'm not quite sure where we'll go from there.

      It's obvious -- from molecular we'll go to atomic, and then subatomic. Imagine using a single proton as a transistor! HHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!
  • Anyone else notice the far-reaching and seemingly completely unrelated claims in the article?

    Not only that, but because the microelectronics could eventually be made out of molecules, some computer parts could be biodegradable since molecules can be broken down into small bits.

    The CPU represents a very small part of the computer disposal problem. These CPUs would be "one millionth" the size of current CPUs, so their biodegradability is even less important. Even so, if these computers would be 1 millio

  • Homegrown IC boards (Score:2, Interesting)

    by FlynnMP3 ( 33498 )
    I can't help but think that in 20 years or so that we'll be able to use the latest design inkjet printers, pop special 'inks' in them, load in IC plans into Photoshop IC, hit print and 2 hours later have usable expansion cards for our computers (sans power connectors). Need more memory or replace bad sticks? Just download the plans for your particular machine and away you go. Wonder how much that is going to cost for the IC plans? Or better yet, what about those evil _hacker_ people who design and relea

  • From TFA (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hockney Twang ( 769594 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @07:06PM (#12709744)
    "It's the biggest thing that we've ever done."


    Holy shit, if this is the biggest thing, I can't wait to see their other work.
  • I can see the Dollar Signs rolling infront of the eyes of the board of trustees. They are going to make a mint off of this!!!!!!! Cha-Ching
  • "computer parts could be biodegradable"

    Great... bit-rot is now real, instead of just an artifact of idiots not maintaining the contract promised by both sides of an API.

    -- Terry
    • Ugh... default return key bindings suck. I also meant ot say:

      "...showed that a single atom on a silicon surface can be controllably charged..."

      This seems to me that it would take a heck of a lot of shielding, or a lot of redundancy, to prevent accidental state changes interfering with the operation of a device based on such components.

      -- Terry
      • A lot of redundancy seems the logical way to handle this. With the super-small circuits this technology implies, the increased usage of chip area should not be a problem. It might even improve the yield in manufacturing, because with enough redundancy a chip might be marketable despite some errors (that are overridden).

        Expect the barely functional chips to go into consumer products and those with less errors at the time of packaging into server hardware.
  • So now my Pentium quad-processor cpu fits on the point of a pin. How to I attach the heatsink?
  • Suggested press release:

    "With molecule-sized transistors a single molecule can switch electrical currents off and on. If a reliable way can be found to make computer 'chips' with single-molecule transistors, then computers would offer higher data processing speeds, lower electrical consumption, and many other advantages over conventional chips, including, perhaps, the ability to create multi-core CPUs with quadrillions of cores, memory 'chips' with more data locations than a human brain has synapses, inexp

  • Polymers can be infinitely long, so a single molecule of something doesn't necessarily mean that it is small.
  • Germanium is a metal, so a germanium transistor is a single molecule transistor.

    Pretty much the same thing for good quality silicon wafers.

    The way I look at it, we are currently using single molecule processors consisting of millions of transistors...

  • Cool, but NOT Revolutionary (Score:5, Informative)

    by ghutchis ( 7810 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:56PM (#12710411) Homepage
    I work in the field of molecular electronics -- I'm sorry, but this doesn't sounds "revolutionary."

    It's hard to comment before I've read the article, but there are a lot of other, very reliable single-molecule transistor experiments. In 2002, Nature called it a "discovery of the year." (Sorry, can't find the URL right now.)

    There have been pretty good single-molecule transistor measurements in other groups since then.

    Granted, if they're able to image the single molecular wire, that's a solid advance over other techniques. But it's hardly the solution to a 20-year old puzzle.

    (By the way, it's more like 30 years since it was shown how a molecule could function as a switch. The first paper on the subject was published in 1973.)

    -Geoff
    • I work on sort-of-related stuff in condensed matter physics, and I have skimmed through some papers about the subject, and I had the same thought as the parent (though I was too lazy to post) - that it's cool, but not quite "revolutionary" and that other groups have come up with single-molecule transistors before.

      Here's a link describing what two groups published in Nature back in 2002 about single molecule transistors (maybe what the parent post was referring to):

      http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200 [sciencedaily.com]
  • How similar is this to HP's crossbar latch, another molecular-sized transistor?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbar_latch [wikipedia.org]

  • Peeeple, TFA doesnt give much detail, but IMHO it's not a transistor, it's more like a very slow switch.

    And there's not much use for a switch that small-- individual molecules arent and cant be made reliable enough. just your basic room temperature heat is enough to disrupt these things due to normal diffusion. Just one weak cosmic ray and the whole thing is toast.

    think of it more as a geeky parlor trick, nothing more.

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