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Apart from its precipitous merger with Compaq, computer maker Hewlett-Packard is betting its future in no small part on molecular electronics. HP has embarked on a 10-year plan to make the use of molecular memory and logic chips one of the standards by which computing, and HP, move beyond the limits imposed by Moore's Laws.

If successful, HP will become a premier supplier of nanoprocessors so small they could be embedded in everything from wallpaper to clothing fibers, making materials smarter.

An example of one such product, "smart caps" for medicines, was outlined by Phil Kuekes, senior scientist and computer architect at HP's Quantum Science Research (QSR) lab. These caps would "know" if and when the medicine had been taken. If the meds have been taken the cap changes color. Overnight, the cap would revert back to its original color.

"It could mean memory in a lot of products," Kuekes told NanotechPlanet. "I mean (the processors) are going to be so small you could put a very simple processor not in your watch, not in a button of your shirt, but inside of a fiber in your shirt. And its going to use so little power its going to run off the light in the room."

To do this, Kuekes and the QSR team, which includes R. Stanley Williams of HP Labs and James Heath of UCLA, have been reinventing the integrated circuit (IC) using chemistry techniques developed by Founding Father and fellow scientist Benjamin Franklin in the 1700s, combined with modern-day quantum physics and a little computer know how thrown in for good measure.

This has led to the development, and subsequent patenting in January, of a circuit made from a single layer of molecules sandwiched between two lines of nanowires just a few atoms wide. The circuit is made by orientating one set of wires more-or-less north/south and another more-or-less east/west. The molecules trapped between the wires at each intersection act as switches regulating current flow between the wires.

When certain rare-earth metals are used to form the molecular filling, a diode, which allows current to flow in just one direction, is created at each intersection. This is important since it has been known since the 1950s a logic circuit can be created in this way, and therefore all the Boolean expressions needed for computing (if, then, or, and, etc.) can be performed using such circuits.

"It turns out," said Kuekes, "once you have this logic you can do all the things a computer can do. So, we have the pieces. What we are actively working on at HP is to take all of these pieces and make them work together to build some really simple ICs."

It is important to note the same circuit can be used in either a memory or logic chip. The implications of this, once the technology gets to the manufacturing stage, means the same equipment and techniques can be used to make both, thus reducing costs. "Its the same structure. That's the essence when I say were reinventing the IC. That whole vision is in fact a major step forward."

It turns out these memory circuits are also non-volatile, which means they retain information indefinitely, like a hard disk, in the absence of power. This one aspect alone will lead to all manner of new and improved portable electronics. But that is down the road. Today, Kuekes and company need to get their discoveries out of the lab and into the real world. This is going to take some time, 10 years in fact, by their current projections.

If they make it, they will come in just under the wire. Current predictions call for 2012 as the year when making ICs smaller using today's technology and fabrication facilities (fabs) will become cost prohibitive. This prediction is based on Moore's second law, which states the smaller an IC chip becomes the more expensive it is to manufacture using existing fab techniques.

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