In 1959, physicist Richard Feynman presented an
amazing talk entitled There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, in which he proposed making very small circuits out of molecules. More than forty years later, people are starting to realize his vision. Thanks to Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) probes and "self-assembly" fabrication techniques, it is now possible to connect electrodes to a molecule and measure its conductance. In 2004, Mark Hersam et al. reported the first experimental measurement of a molecular resonant tunneling device on silicon. This new field of Molecular
Electronics may someday provide the means to miniaturize circuits beyond the limits of silicon, keeping Moore's Law in force for many years to come.
Learn more about molecular electronics from the resources on this site, listed below. More information on Molecular electronics can be found here.