Nanowire nanocircuits

Article By:

Duan, Xiangfeng Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Huang, Yu Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lieber, Charles M. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Last reviewed:2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.YB030510

The rapid miniaturization of electronics to the submicrometer scale has led to remarkable increases in computing power while enabling reductions in cost. However, as the microelectronics industry advances toward ever-smaller devices, it is believed that both physical and economic factors of current top-down (small structures created from larger components) silicon technology may soon limit further advances. Revolutionary breakthroughs rather than current evolutionary progress could enable computing systems to go beyond these limits and fuel the projected increase in computing demands. A bottom-up approach, where functional electronic structures are assembled from chemically synthesized, well-defined nanoscale building blocks, has the potential to go far beyond the limits of top-down technology by defining key nanometer-scale metrics through synthesis and subsequent assembly. This will require conceptually new device architectures and fundamentally different fabrication strategies, but it could provide unparalleled speed, storage, and size reductions, with the promise of powering computers and other miniaturized electronic devices that may outperform existing devices and open up totally new technologies.

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