update.400 (fwd)

[Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 09:24:37 -0500 (EST)
> From: physnews@aip.org (AIP listserver)
> Subject: update.400

> PROTONS PERSIST for at least 1.6 x 10^33 years. With few

> THE CONDUCTANCE OF A SINGLE MOLECULE has been
> measured directly by having the molecule bridge the break in a thin
> wire.  Scientists at Yale use the wire ends as electrodes for sending
> current through a small polymer molecule poised between them. 
> Previously the electrical properties of single molecules had been
> studied, but this was through the use of a probe  microscope which
> samples the molecule across a vacuum gap. Mark Reed (203-432-
> 4300, reed@surf.eng.yale.edu) reports  that the current-versus-voltage
> characteristics of the molecule (important for any potential device
> application) resemble those of a quantum dot in that certain electron
> energies are preferred over others, in this case because of the internal
> energy levels of the molecule itself. (Paper to be presented at the
> American Vacuum Society (AVS) meeting in Baltimore, 2-6
> November 1998, website:
> http://www.vacuum.org/symposium/program.html)

> STACKED ORGANIC LIGHT EMITTING DEVICES (SOLEDs)
> produce full color but take up less real estate on a chip than their
> planar counterparts which require 3 single-color pixels.  This higher
> resolution, as well as tunability and good saturation (vivid primary
> colors rather than pastels), can now be had with the same voltages
> and efficiencies that apply to previous  organic displays. Paul
> Burrows of Princeton (burrows@ee.princeton.edu) believes
> computer-sized flat panel displays using SOLEDs will be available
> within a few years.  Smaller displays such as for cellphones may be
> realized even earlier.   (Paper at the AVS meeting.)

> NANOCOMPUTERS IN A BOTTLE.  UCLA scientist James Heath
> and his Hewlett Packard collaborators Stan Williams and Phil Kuekes
> hope to grow computers in chemical solution by building up arrays of
> atoms or molecules (at first in two-dimensional planes but later in
> three-dimensional volumes) linked together with tiny wires, perhaps
> eventually carbon nanotubes.  Such a computer could be tiny (smaller
> than a sand grain), energy efficient (10,000 times more so than current
> silicon computers), and capable of new tricks, such as being able to
> sense and respond to its environment through chemically activated
> switches.  Implementing a chemically assembled computer will depend
> on a high degree of defect tolerance in the wiring, unlike today's
> microprocessors which require wiring  perfection.  Presently the
> UCLA-HP group will be doing rudimentary calculations with a
> computer including some components at the nano and  others at the
> micro level. An all-nano computer performing simple computations,
> Heath believes, is a couple of years away.  Serious applications would
> follow years later.  Heath (310-825-2836, heath@chem.ucla.edu) will
> report on nanocomputers at the AVS meeting.


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