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 Don Noid , Bobby Sumpter, Ross Toednte, Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
| In just 15 or 20 years, conventional transistors and circuits will be so small that they will bump into physical limits, bringing the current progress in computing to a halt. But there's a revolutionary approach waiting in the wings: nanotechnology. The idea is to build far tinier devices out of individual atoms and molecules, mainly by using the clever trick of instructing them to assemble themselves. In this realm of the ultrasmall, the strange laws of quantum mechanics cause bizarre phenomena, such as electrons mysteriously tunneling through insulating barriers. Such strangeness would wreak havoc with miniature conventional computers, but can be exploited to do radical new types of computing or other tasks. "Nanotechnology is a big idea--a contender, with genomics, for changing the world," says Harvard University chemist George M. Whitesides.
No one yet knows what that world will look like. "In 20 years, we will be using technology we've not even dreamed of now," says Cherry A. Murray, head of physical sciences research at Lucent Technologies' Bell Laboratories. But visionaries are beginning to exploit the properties of molecules like buckyballs (above), which are made up of interlocking atoms of carbon. Researchers are building wires made from individual molecules and devices that work with the movement of single electrons, the first steps to supercomputers on a thumbnail, or shirt-button-size memories that could store all of human knowledge. In medicine, nanoparticles are being used to probe the workings of cells. Eventually, nanoprobes could spot--or even fix--glitches in single cells, turning genes on or off to conquer disease. And the ability to build things molecule by molecule opens the door to nanofactories. A box on your desktop could dial up a database, download specifications, and then make everything from computers to toasters. |