AVS 45th International Symposium
    Electronic Materials and Processing Division Monday Sessions
       Session EM-MoA

Invited Paper EM-MoA1
Pathways Toward Chemically Assembled Electronic Nanocomputers

Monday, November 2, 1998, 2:00 pm, Room 316

Session: Future Issues in Electronics and Photonics
Presenter: J.R. Heath, University of California, Los Angeles
Authors: J.R. Heath, University of California, Los Angeles
R.S. Williams, Hewlett Packard Corporation
P.J. Kuekes, Hewlett Packard Corporation
Correspondent: Click to Email
Many ideas for alternatives to CMOS-based VLSI manufacturing have been proposed as new paradigms for computer fabrication. These ideas include quantum computing, molecular computing, and chemically-assembled electronic nanocomputers. Of these three, only electronic nanocomputers can potentially build upon the foundation of CMOS architectures, and, as such, they hold the potential for relatively near-term realization. However, even the simplest of computational tasks have yet to be demonstrated for electronic nanocomputers. From a chemist's point of view, there are two major differences between anything fabricated chemically, and a current microchip. The current microchip is complex and is the result of manufacturing perfection, while anything that is chemically synthesized is likely to be ordered (crystalline) and imperfect. Thus, in many ways, the chemist's task is to design a system from which perfect complexity can be extracted from imperfect order. In this presentation, I will discuss an ongoing HP/UCLA project in which we are attempting to build an electronic nanocomputer. Architectural considerations will be stressed, and experimental progress towards building the nanocomputer will be discussed.