Organic Molecules Challenge
Silicon's Reign as King of Semiconductors
There is a revolution fomenting in the semiconductor industry. It may take 30
years or more to reach perfection, but when it does the advance may be so great
that today's computers will be little more than calculators compared to what
will come after. The revolution is called molecular electronics, and its goal is
to depose silicon as king of the computer chip and put carbon in its place.
The perpetrators are a few clever chemists trying to use pigment, proteins,
polymers, and other organic molecules to carry out the same task that
microscopic patterns of silicon and metal do now. For years these researchers
worked in secret, mainly at their ...
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before molecular electronics start having a noticeable impact."
Molecular electronics is so named because it uses molecules to act as the
"wires" and "switches" of computer chips. Wires, may someday be replaced by
polymers that conduct electricity, such as polyacetylene and
polyphenylenesulfide. Another candidate might be organometallic compounds such
as porphyrins and phthalocyanines which also conduct electricity. When
crystallized, these flat molecules stack like pancakes, and metal ions in their
centers line up with one another to form a one-dimensional wire.
Many organic molecules can exist in two distinct stable states that differ in
some measurable property and are interconvertable. These could be switches of
molecular electronics. For example, bacteriorhodpsin, a bacterial pigment,
exists in two optical states: one state absorbs green light, the other orange.
Shinning green light on the green-absorbing state converts it into the orange
state and vice versa. Birge and his ...
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silicon.
But 16 megabytes may be near the end of the road. As bits get smaller and loser
together, "crosstalk" between them tends to degrade their performance. If the
components were pushed any closer they would short circuit. Physical limits have
triumphed over engineering.
That is when chemistry will have its day. Carbon, the element common to all
forms of life, will become the element of computers too. "That is when we see
electronics based on inorganic semiconductors, namely silicon and gallium
arsenide, giving way to electronics based on organic compounds," said Scott E.
Rickert, associate professor of macromolecular science, Case Western Reserve
University, Cleveland, and head of ...
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Organic Molecules Challenge. (2004, September 30). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Organic-Molecules-Challenge/15153
"Organic Molecules Challenge." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 30 Sep. 2004. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Organic-Molecules-Challenge/15153>
"Organic Molecules Challenge." Essayworld.com. September 30, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Organic-Molecules-Challenge/15153.
"Organic Molecules Challenge." Essayworld.com. September 30, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Organic-Molecules-Challenge/15153.
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