Can molecular electronics dominate the next generation of electronic devices?

摘要

In the late 1990s,molecular electronics emerged rapidly and spectacularly as an area of research that encompasses several paradigms in which electrons are transported through molecules (1,2).An often-stated motivation for pursuing these devices is to extend Moore's law of the exponential growth in microelectronic device density.The state of the art in silicon technology is a minimum feature size of 65 nm.If the trend toward miniaturization continues,eventually devices will have to be fabricated on the molecular scale of a few nanometers.This article will address the promise of molecular electronic devices and some of the problems with characterizing electronic components with molecular dimensions.